Challenge to each and every voter

FIRST AND foremost, the next president must be ultra-clean, absolutely with no record of anomalous financial transaction(s) both in government and in the private sector. With our scarce national funds, every single centavo should be properly accounted for and put to use for national development and productivity.

Secondly, he/she must be ultra-patriotic. There must be only one basis for all his/her plans and decisions—the wellbeing of the motherland and citizens. In every decision to be made, there ought to be not the slightest taint of

personal interest and self-aggrandizement.

Thirdly, the incoming president should be highly intelligent and well-educated, through formal means and through experience acquired in his/her years as a key officer of government and/or of an established private organization. Even a genius cannot perform very well and productively in any given job without prior relative experience. The presidency is the most powerful and delicate job in this country—the rise and fall of a nation depends on what kind of president the people elect.

We all have horribly seen the free fall of our nation under an enormously corrupt president who ironically possessed the mix of intelligence and experience to lead the nation toward sustainable development and eventually industrialization; but, sadly, he succumbed to greed for power and money.

Fourthly, he/she must be courageous and extremely strong-willed to initiate growth, which means change; for change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. The nation must now grow after decades of drifting in the waves of corrupt and mediocre leadership that has kept our nation ranked among the poorest nations in Asia! The time is ripe for electing a president brave enough to start a revolution of change and transform this nation from being unindustrialized without any single facility to manufacture tools, machines and equipment, into a productive, industrialized and affluent nation. Still, remember the country’s steel plant which was turned over to a Malaysian group and eventually closed, thus ending the nation’s aspiration for industrialization.

Given these rightful traits of a right president, we challenge each and every elector to cast his/her vote for the presidential candidate who possesses these great qualities, otherwise, this nation will remain at the helm of mediocre and corrupt presidents who lack vision and mission to lead a nation so rich with natural resources and manpower.

—JESUS R. FLORENTINO, Cambanogoy, Asuncion, Davao del Norte