A consensus on what makes a good president

What does it mean to be successful? To a good friend in the corporate world, it means ordering anything you like in a fancy restaurant without looking at the price. To some, it’s about being able to live for something other than just a fat paycheck. This could be a dream or aspiration for one’s family, community, and country.

Caloocan Bishop Ambo David touched on this when he shared the words of his iconic philosophy teacher Fr. Roque J. Ferriols with the 2020 Ateneo graduating class: “Eh ano kung makapagtapos ka ng kolehiyo sa Ateneo? Eh ano kung sumikat ka, yumaman o maging makapangyarihan sa lipunan? Ano ba ang kinalaman ng lahat ng ito sa tanong na sino ako at ano ang layunin ko sa buhay? (So what if you finished college at Ateneo? So what if you became famous, got rich, or amassed power? What’s the connection of all these to the questions ‘who am I and what is my purpose in life?’)”

The answers to such questions would no doubt vary from one person to the next. It all depends on how one was raised and what values were taught.

Alas, we can never approach the question “who should we elect as the next leader of our country?” in the same manner. There is so much at stake to leave this up to individual existential decisions which are now vulnerable to algorithms, influencers, trolls, and fake news.

In February 1986, it was much easier to answer this question as we were only faced with two options against the backdrop of a raging political and economic crisis: continuity under Ferdinand Marcos or change under Cory Aquino.

Today, voters have to choose among no less than 10 candidates, five of whom now command varying percentages of voter preference, according to recent surveys.

When I went to the UP Teach Talk last Feb. 18, I assumed that if there was one group of Filipinos who would have a consensus on the guidelines needed to choose our next president, it would have to be the over 1,000 ethics teachers from state colleges in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The group had gathered online to learn from two leading ethics teachers from UP Diliman. After all, we all base our modules on the same canonical texts such as Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” which underlines the practice of intellectual and moral virtues, and Immanuel Kant’s “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.”

To my dismay, when senior members of the UP Diliman faculty started sharing their voting guidelines in response to a participant’s question, out came divergent viewpoints from the Zoom chat box. “Marcos bias!” pointed out one teacher. Another complained that this webinar was about ethics, so politics should not be discussed. To which a triggered teacher replied: “If you think that ethics does not concern politics, you should not teach the subject.” A muted exchange of hashtags ensued next, with “Never again!” eliciting “Never again to dilawan!”

Sadly, the preceding is consistent with what we find on social media nowadays. Which is why I strongly believe we owe it both to Filipinos who fought for “truth, freedom, and justice” at Edsa and ourselves, to clarify as a country, “what facts-based qualities should we look for in a presidential candidate?” Let’s not settle for generic qualities that can be co-opted by anyone who has the means to hire the best social media strategists and image consultants.

Here’s an idea: What if the leading historians, political scientists, ethicists, and managers from all over the country were to scour our historical archives for the recurrent four to five virtues that our greatest Filipino leaders lived out? From Apolinario Mabini to Ramon Magsaysay, from Gabriela Silang to Josefa Llanes Escoda. Upon the completion of this national research project, what if these recurrent virtues and their corresponding facts-based behavioral indicators were adopted as a standard national guideline for voting?

On the day we all can easily answer the question “what does a good Filipino leader look like,” maybe we will no longer have to worry about the terrifying implications of voting for the wrong candidate, one described in that Rico Blanco song as “a snake that would kiss you and call you friend,” and in the next breath, “Pupulupot sa leeg mo’t sisipsip ng iyong dugo. Ipapako ka sa krus kapag ikaw ay natuyo (suck you dry and crucify you).”

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Von Katindoy went to Edsa with his classmates, teachers, and formators. He now teaches at two universities while pursuing graduate work.