The curse of ‘popularity’

From the movie Spiderman:

Uncle Parker — “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

The villain — “People like to see their hero fail. No matter what you do for them, they will hate you in the end”.

Spiderman — “It is my gift, it is my curse”.

And from Lao Tzu the Chinese Taoist philosopher who wrote Tao Te Ching, “The Book of the Way” in 600 BC-531BC: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

There are hundreds more of such quotes to inspire leaders to go on  despite the pain of ‘unpopularity’. To the more profound, leadership is the converse of popularity. So President GMA should not lose sleep over the SWS (here it goes again always on cue for destabilization?) survey pronouncing her as the most unpopular president since EDSA. If  it is any consolation to her, I do not think we lack Filipinos who think and know what the SWS surveys would never cover: the invisible line through which a leader reaches her people.

These Filipinos, they may be a few or many, disdain a survey at this time with a nation teetering on economic difficulties brought about by internal as well as external factors. It is unnecessary, even a  disservice at this time when what we need is a symbol around which we could rally and hold together as a nation in a world crisis. The Presidency of the Philippines is one such symbol of the Filipino nation. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo just happens to be the President at  this time.

Her hands have been tied from effectively exercising her leadership by a survey that says her followers do not like her. But on the other hand the same survey should inspire her to uncommon courage, as did so many other leaders, to draw on her inner strength. It is only in solitude that she can acquire that kind of wisdom. That is never the  stuff of headlines.

A leader should be more worried if she or he is popular like someone we know who up to this day thinks Filipinos are all fools. He preys on the ignorant and the poor mesmerized by showbiz popularity. That kind of leadership will never lift the poor in this country. Leadership has many aspects but popularity is not one of them. We need only look around us, among friends and relatives to know this — the popular guy is not a leader. The leader is one who uses all his or her talents and skills to achieve a vision.

President GMA has her faults but she has been one of the hardest working presidents of our country. She has had the courage to initiate difficult measures like the Evat that has been the source of her unpopularity. She recalled the Philippine contingent in Iraq for the sake of a single OFW against all odds and marked her among American neoconservatives.

She is president of our country in a world hit by inflation and a looming recession that affects every nook and cranny, not just the Philippines. She knows she has a job to do. However flawed that leadership has been — future historians will give her the credit: she is the Filipino president who refused to be overthrown despite internal and external attempts to overthrow her. This is not to say that there has been no corruption in her government. There has but today we are in a particular crossroads of our history when the accusations of corruption cannot mean more than that she guard assiduously the sovereignty of the Filipino nation.

Here is a leaf from the Time Magazine Archives about a debate between a popular president and an unpopular senator who could have been the president: “Ramon Magsaysay, the forthright, freewheeling young (47) President of the Philippines, is one of the staunchest friends the US has in Asia. His vast popularity in the country and the immense Philippine goodwill towards the US is often not reflected in Congress, where shrewd politicians in Magsaysay’s own Nacionalista Party often succeed in putting a brake on him.

“Chief among them is Senator Claro Recto, 65, a brilliant, caustic lawyer who has never forgotten or forgiven the US for his being put in prison at World War II’s end by Douglas MacArthur (Recto served as Foreign Minister under the Japanese occupation).

“Last month President Magsaysay, encouraged by the US decision to give treaty protection to Formosa and the Pescadores, strongly backed the US ‘policy of firmness’ and introduced in the Philippine Congress a resolution stating that ‘we stand squarely behind the US.’ Angry Claro Recto, an influential member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a quibbling substitute motion, leaving out Magsaysay’s words of approval and support, and reflecting Recto’s neutralist way of thinking.

“For four weeks the Senate bitterly debated the matter. When it came to a vote last week, Neutralist Recto was utterly beaten. Of 22 sitting Senators, all but one voted with Magsaysay. The one: Claro Recto.”

This episode reported by an American magazine might have evoked different reactions at the time. But today Claro M. Recto is honored and revered as the Filipino intellectual who represented our nationalist aspirations. The Time article acquires a different character and a new perspective for Filipinos shines through. Recto may have been ‘unpopular’ but he represented the spirit that could  have lifted us out of our backwardness and our inability to make a  stand for the sovereignty of our nation. It is not too late.

Leadership is not a popularity contest. No leader in history has ever had the level of support he or she might have wished for the tasks they need to do. That is not necessarily a sign of failure. What it does mean to a leader is to learn how to live constantly under the tension between their own vision and the voice of the people.