Indonesia

Part 1: Choosing for 2016: Kapitan, lingkod, katiwala

Dean Tony La Viña

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Genuine leadership, from an Ignatian point of view, focuses on the possible, the future. It integrates 4 fundamental pillars: self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism.

If we had a more mature democracy, choosing our country’s leaders would not be difficult. One would simply look at the political parties vying for position and vote according to one’s party affiliation or inclination.

Usually, it would be for a political party whose ideology a voter shared. Of course, the leadership of that party would matter but more important would be its positions on issues and its platform of government.

Unfortunately, we do not have strong political parties in the Philippines. As we have seen in the phenomena of the Nacionalista Party having several vice-presidential candidates and the proliferation of “guest” and “adopted” candidates in the senatorial and other races, our politicians easily swing from one party to another, with no other criterion but political convenience.

Indeed, this election is the strangest ever with the phenomenon of “guest candidates” and “candidate-sharing” becoming prevalent with all the political parties resorting to it.

It must be mentioned that two party-list organizations, Akbayan and Makabayan (which is a coalition of several party-list organizations) are real political parties, with members sharing a political ideology and with organized sectors forming their backbone. The Kapatiran Party likewise started as a promising ideologically-based political party.

But electorally, for nationwide elections, candidates from these 3 parties are not able to compete with other more established candidates. Indeed, up to now, Akbayan, Makabayan, and Kapatiran have not been successful in having members elected to the Senate. Makabayan and Akbayan are supporting presidential candidates in the 2016 elections while Kapatiran is calling for a boycott even as one its members has filed his candidacy.

Without political parties, we have no choice but to look at every candidate – their backgrounds, record, values, and positions – and compare them to each other based on a criterion that we could use as the lens for our decision.

This is what I seek to articulate in this two-part article – criteria for choosing whom to vote for in 2016. The first version of this article was published last December in Fabilioh, the alumni magazine of Ateneo de Manila. As I did in the earlier version, I will illustrate the criteria by giving examples from the presidential race. I will consider how these apply to the 5 main candidates: Jejomar Binay, Rody Duterte, Grace Poe, Mar Roxas, and Miriam Defensor Santiago.

It should be noted also that the criteria I propose is applicable to all candidates for all executive positions, and to some extent, also apply to candidates for legislative positions.

Sources of criteria

The criteria I propose come from 4 sources – the Ignatian tradition of leadership as articulated by Chris Lowney, the vision of a leader proposed by Fr Horacio Dela Costa SJ, and the concept of servant-leader by Robert Greenleaf. I will then propose a combination of these qualities of a good leader through the criterion that the Movement for Good Government (MGG) suggests for our electoral choices.

Heroic leadership as criterion

For the problems facing the Philippines, we have many proposed solutions. In most cases, we even have ample resources to spend on these solutions. There has been one critical factor missing in the equation, though, which is why many of these ideas – from the lofty goals of good governance and economic development, to the mundane tasks of getting roads paved and trash collected – have failed to take off. That missing factor is leadership.

Leadership is not just about the giving of good orders – though this will be expected of those placed in positions of authority. In looking at the history of how the Jesuits spread across the world, leaving lasting impacts on the societies they visited, former JP Morgan executive (and former Jesuit seminarian) Chris Lowney argues that practically every Jesuit exercised leadership, or at least was encouraged to do so.

He points out that the first Jesuits adopted the leadership style of St Ignatius of Loyola, a formula that now “has since been tested across generations, across continents, and across cultures”, serving “explorers, mapmakers, linguists, astronomers, theologians, scientists, musicians, social activists, writers of children’s stories, lobbyists, preachers – even school teachers and cannon manufacturers.”

How do you become a leader who makes the kind of impact on the world that Ignatius of Loyola had? Lowney suggests how:

  • You appreciate your own dignity and rich potential
  • You recognize weaknesses and attachments that block that potential
  • You articulate the values you stand for
  • You establish personal goals
  • You form a point of view on the world – where you stand, what you want, and how you will relate to others
  • You see the wisdom and value in the examen and commit to it – the daily, self-reflective habit of refocusing on priorities and extracting lessons from successes and failures

According to the former Jesuit, whatever their chosen or assigned mission, those living the Jesuit leadership way champion the following values:

  • Understanding their strengths, weaknesses, values, and worldview
  • Confidently innovating and adapting to embrace a changing world
  • Engaging others with a positive, loving attitude
  • Energizing themselves and others by heroic ambitions

Genuine leadership, from an Ignatian point of view, focuses on the possible, the future. It integrates 4 fundamental pillars: self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism.

According to Lowney: “Love-driven leaders seek out and honor the potential in self and others. Heroic leaders seek to shape the future rather that passively endure whatever unfolds. And ingenuity-driven leaders uncover ways to turn human potential into achievement and a vision of the future into a reality.”

The first Jesuits, according to Lowney, were heroic leaders: “bold and daring, ready at a moment’s notice to sail forth to exotic locations, for God and for the salvation of human souls anywhere, anytime.”

He described them as “cunning, exploiting their knowledge of astronomy to gain the favor of the ultra-closed Chinese imperial court, or building Europe’s first universal and free secondary school system, with the gratitude of European townships, and as a breeding ground for potential Jesuit recruits.”

And finally: “These heroic leaders, last but not least, knew themselves: what they were capable of, what their weaknesses were, their place in the world, and their deeply-felt mission to make that world a better place.”

Dela Costa’s qualities of leadership

More than half a century ago, in 1953, Fr Dela Costa spoke before the graduating class of Ateneo de Davao and identified the characteristics of an Ateneo or Jesuit college graduate. I think these apply to leaders as well.

Leaders should be persons of practical excellence, what Fr Dela Costa described in his 1953 speech as “persons of judgment”. Practical excellence means having a set of competencies that will enable leaders to do their jobs effectively.

Leaders should be persons of principles. They must be guided by moral values, to stick to them, and navigate properly the dilemmas of politics. In my own career as a public servant, the most difficult challenge has been – how can I do the right thing the right way? It is not enough to do the ethical thing; it is just as important to do it the right way so that you are able to implement decisions, defend your actions, and actually solve problems.

Leaders should be persons of the people, and especially for the poorest in our society. A pubic servant is a person-for-others.

That is why Fr Dela Costa writes how we need not just national leaders but good local leaders as well: “We need national leaders; the best we can get. But make no mistake: it is local and regional community leaders that our people need most of all. Not leaders who reside in some distant capital, out of touch with them, out of their reach, but leaders who are right here with them, who know them and whom they know; who understand their problems, their hopes, their dreams, and who can, because of the education they have received, give substance to these hopes and dreams.”

Servant leadership will be good

“Servant Leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in “The Servant as Leader”, an essay that was first published in 1970. Greenleaf defined the servant-leader as “servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”

Greenleaf further differentiated between the two types of leaders: A servant-leader always shares power and puts the needs of others first while the leader-first is about the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid”.

According to Greenleaf: The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?

In another essay, The Institution as Servant, Greenleaf articulated what is now called the “credo” of servant leadership.

This is how he articulated it: “This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions – often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.” – Rappler.com

(READ: Part 2: Assessing the candidates for 2016)

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