Some years ago, there were three ladies who were members of the Queen City Toastmasters Club, here in Cebu City, whose contributions in the invisible realm of philosophy formulation could only become appreciated when one of them crossed the great barrier recently. When friends started to share moments together to send off Portia Dacalos, to her eternal rest, they never missed to recall her snippets of gold in such undertakings as preparing the club contestants to speech competitions. Portia's thoughts found their way to help Hazel Aguisanda and Rose Solante, win national championships and the right to represent the country in the international speech jousts.
I remember Ms. Aguisanda's speech entitled "Let There Be Light." During a practice session done by Ms. Aguisanda for her fellow club members for them to suggest how to strengthen her speech, Portia showed a different side of her life. Everybody knew that Portia was a livewire whose squeaking laughter was most pervasive. In that practice run though, she raised a point that caught us by surprise. She suggested to Ms Aguisanda to subdue her voice, as if to subdue a cry, at a particular portion of her speech in order to highlight the import of the message. The critic, when given, was rather innocent but the impact was big enough to send her off to the World Speaking Championship as the Philippine bet.
The other lady of the three I mentioned above was Rose Solante, who now earns a comfortable living in a foreign land. Ms. Solante, a petite lady with a powerful voice, mesmerized her audience with her speech entitled "Copper and Gold." Again during a practice session, it was the late Portia who interrupted the speech delivery and asked Ms. Solante how copper differed from gold in a manner that was easy for an audience to understand. She was quite hesitant, even apologetic, when Portia raised that angle but, it turned out that her "little idea" added such weight to the speech as to make it profound.
True to the off tangent nature of this column, I recall Portia, Hazel, and Rose, in the light of the coming national elections.
Few days from now, the campaign season will begin. Candidates for national office will parade before us, shake our hands when there is opportunity and deliver their prepared speeches. Their mission is to convince us to give them our votes in May. I am sure that most, if not all of them, have crafted profound speeches with the help of artisans and professionals, and have had practiced them in interminable sessions, ala Hazel and Rose then.
Our duty as citizens of this country, is to evaluate these candidates. Since it is very difficult for us to know their real personal backgrounds, their idiosyncrasies, their true character, let us examine what is available to us. Let the Portia's in us find our way thru understanding the philosophies of these candidates how they can appease our national emotions wronged by a new world imperialist known as China; what intellect they possess to shed light to a policy direction at keeping our international dignity and how they can harness our patriotism in order to stand up against a present international bully.
We can and we must employ Portia's intuitiveness to realize whatever gold there is in the hearts of candidates. It is only copper for politicians to promise land to the landless among us without telling us how to attain this end. Presenting to us what is achievable is gold. Politicians who tell us that education is at the core of their candidacies are talking copper. When they show to us how to elevate the education of our impoverished brothers in realistic paradigms, they may be talking of the gold that Portia wanted Rose to highlight.
Indeed, let us be profound in our choices. For instance, we do not need my idol Manny Paquiao in the Senate because in the senate halls, they do not don gloves there. We must only vote for those who can provide light to our country and demonstrate hearts of gold for our people.