In search of the right president

President Benigno Aquino III INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

PRESIDENT AQUINO delivers his sixth and final State of the Nation Address (Sona) next week, and will henceforth be tagged with the unsavory appellation of “lame duck” in his final year in office. The question of who will succeed him already figures prominently in public and private discussions, to the point of becoming a distraction from more urgent work.

Many expect little from the administration in its final year, as political campaigns start being foremost in politicians’ minds. Businesses also tend to hold back on new investments, taking a “wait and see” attitude in anticipation of a leadership change. Everyone hopes that the next president will stay the course on things where we’ve done well, and improve on those where we have not. The question boils down to what our next president should be like (and who among the viable candidates would fit the bill best).

Most of us welcomed the presidency of Benigno S. Aquino III for the way it promised improved governance, especially in the area of integrity and honesty. It showed quite clearly in how our investment numbers shifted dramatically after 2010, with an upswing that has consistently marked the past five years’ data. Yet President Aquino and his administration have not been without fault. Even so, so much has been accomplished under his leadership that presidents before him had been unable to deliver. I will not elaborate on these here, as next week’s Sona will surely highlight them. His faults notwithstanding, President Aquino has been, to my mind, a true blessing to the Filipino nation—and we all hope his successor will be as well.

In choosing who he or she must be, we must be clear on the qualities we want him/her to have. I think we should have all learned by now, from experience with past presidents, what kind of president we should not have. More generally, we should have also learned by now what kind of attitudes we as a people should not have as well.

Many of us remember that essay supposedly written by a Korean observer that made the rounds online several years ago, asserting that our problem is that we Filipinos simply don’t love our country enough. He cited how Koreans and Thais from all walks of life voluntarily gave up their gold jewelry to the government, for example, to help shore up their dwindling reserves at the height of the 1997 financial crisis—something supposedly unthinkable for Filipinos. James Fallows, in an Atlantic Monthly article that attracted much attention in 1987, wrote about the Filipinos’ “damaged culture,” with the damage he alluded to summed up in a general lack of concern for the common good.

I call it a lack of nationalism. But I do not mean the nationalism espoused by some that borders on xenophobia, almost to the point of despising everything foreign. Rather, the nationalism we lack is the sense of oneness as a nation, the lack of ability to place the national common good above self-interest. We see it in many people in public office, and we see it among us ordinary citizens. We seem to be a fragmented nation of self-centered individuals—and we know it and even joke about it. We see it in Filipinos here at home, as in motorists who inconvenience everyone else by forcing a new counterflow lane rather than wait for their turn. We see it in Filipinos abroad, as in the way many overseas Filipino associations split up repeatedly when election losers “secede” and form their own group. We see it in Filipinos rich or poor alike, well-educated or not, wherever they may be.

For me, then, the foremost quality we need in our next president is the ability to exemplify and bring about unity or oneness as a Filipino nation—that is, nationalism of the right kind. I particularly admired the way I was recruited into the Ramos Cabinet without anyone bothering to ask me if I had even voted for him. Later, I heard of how an extremely qualified candidate for a key position in the Estrada administration was told outright that she could not be chosen because she had not campaigned (not just voted!) for Estrada. At times, the fallen president even appeared to be fomenting a class war, when he should have been fostering unity and harmony among Filipinos. That, to me, was the most unpresidential of his faults—and I worry for our country now that I see the same tendency in a prominent presidential contender.

Not a few people were scared in 2004 of the prospect of a Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) presidency, clearly because of our past disastrous experience with an actor president. But one’s profession need not be a liability (nor an asset, for that matter) for the country’s presidency. Most did not need to be convinced that FPJ’s values were different from Estrada’s; the former seemed to have been seen favorably by most people in that regard. But there remained a common fear that he could easily be subject to manipulation by ill-motivated advisers and cronies. It’s for this reason that I’ve come to believe that more than anything, the key attribute we ought to be looking at in choosing our president is character. It is that character that would lead him/her to heed the right advice when his/her lack of technical competence will call for it. And it is that character that would determine his/her judgment on decisions of policy and selection of appointees to key positions.

It’s time we stopped looking for the perfect president, now or in the future. There is no such animal. But in our search, I submit that the first thing we ought to look for is solid character.

Given that, I believe that most everything else should fall into place.

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