Happy New Year, Mr. President

It’s 2012! And as we usher in the New Year, let us not forget to look back on the year that has just come to past.

Boy! What a year it was. God has given us quite a number of tests and trials – natural calamities, conflicts, scandals and political challenges. We truly have been undergoing some cleansing. Unfortunately, we need spiritual renewal as a country before we see a better tomorrow.

We always say, New Year means new beginnings, new life, new hopes, new dreams and aspirations. As a country, it is time for inner transformation. We need to tread the path to progress with renewed vigor, enthusiasm and discipline for what is good for the majority and not just for a few.

Let’s start with the local mayors. They must not own the cities. Instead, they must serve it. If you look around most of the cities you will see insignias molded in every post, every corner or every pavement in the district. The street lamps shine with their initials. Schools and parks have their names painted everywhere. Sanamagan! Do they own the city or do they serve it? They seem to be converting the cities into their own forts. And unfortunately, when disaster strikes, they are unprepared.

Let’s take Cagayan de Oro’s fate. Why did the mayors there allow illegal logging to take place? Where were the mayors when the disaster struck? Locals claim they were nowhere to be found. In fact, there is a move to already oust one of the mayors in the area due to too much corruption and gambling.

If our LGUs show the people that they work to serve and not to campaign for the next election, then, that is already victory for the nation. Here’s wishing and hoping that they stop spending our tax-money on foolishness for personal gain and start working for progress.

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Despite all the trials and tribulations in year 2011: Spratly’s issue, PNP crimes, resignation of Senator Miguel Zubiri, discovery of unqualified beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program by DSWD, the PAGCOR coffee exposé, the resignation of Merceditas Gutierrez and the drama the came along with it, the cases of drug mules sentenced to death in China, Typhoon Pedring, the shocking death of Angelo Reyes, the never-ending debate on the RH bill, the conflict between the Executive and Judiciary branches of government, the arrest of GMA, the impeachment of Chief Justice Corona and Typhoon Sendong among others, we have remained resilient as a nation but wounded.

The President should strengthen his command and come up with a better map to lead this country. First on his agenda must be to resolve the Hacienda Luisita issue. His actions on this public concern will tell us what kind of leader he is. Yes, it’s as simple as that, Mr. President. Remember your mother was scarred by this issue during her leadership. People could not understand why she isolated Hacienda Luisita from Agrarian Reform. There may be issues we do not understand but it’s very clear in black and white that no one should be exempted from this law including the family of the President. You should put a closure to this once and for all.

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As we look on to your leadership in fulfilling the promises you made (which seems to be moving slowly), we turn our eyes on the people around you, your political and economic advisers. It’s quite obvious that you seem overwhelmed by too much advice, harried and harassed by job seekers, and rendered irritable by criticism. But then again, you have to remember that you asked for the job and we on the other hand gave it to you. Now, we must grin and bear the consequences.

My father once wrote, “There is an old English proverb which goes: Rich men’s faults are covered with money and physicians’ with earth. In plain talk, the wealthy can paper over their shortcomings and weaknesses with cash and the doctors bury their mistakes. On the other hand, a president can do, neither. In the weeks, months and years to come, every misstep, every error, every perceived fault of a chief executive of whom much is demanded will be publicized, dissected examined and documented. He will be hectored, lectured and at times, ridiculed.”

P-Noy is at the crossroads. If he is seen to be an intolerant leader whose executive spokesmen shoots the messenger of bad news, the time will come when no bad news will be brought to him. Then he will be really and truly cut off from reality and from the world. He will be a prisoner in his self-made ivory tower.

I pray that he will soon realize that the greatest peril to him lies not in the ranks of his critics, but in those mobs of flatters and sycophants who are now rushing to massage his ego for their own purposes. They will tell him that he is perfect, and he, being human, will prefer their sugar-coated words to those whose candor tends to offend him.

But in the end, he will have to be on his own. If he does his best, true to himself, although stormed at with shot and shell, he will become a good leader – and the rest of the nation will readily fall in step with him.

If he does not, then no amount of public relations effort and apple-polishing will keep his armor bright and free from rust. His best friends are those who should criticize him because they anxiously want him to succeed.

I have dedicated this New Year’s column to the President because we need good changes in public service. Filipinos are a happy people but somewhere down the road, the three branches of government (both local and national) have failed us big time!

Mr. President, IF only our country can shape up and move up! I leave you with an inspiring poem IF by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, or being hated don’t give way to hating, and yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

I challenge you Mr. President and the other leaders of this nation to put to shame those defeatists who, accustomed to an easy, sheltered existence, do not wish to take any risk nor make any sacrifice for their country.

God be with you. Happy New Year!