Not Personalities, But Character and Platform

 

By Ruby Ann Kagaoan – Calo

 

A CALL FOR SERVANT-LEADERS willing to run for national and local public office has been launched by Ang Kapatiran.

Ang Kapatiran is a national political party accredited by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) on May 8, 2004, two days before the last national elections. “I see it as God’s protection,” says Ang Kapatiran founding President Nandy Pacheco, who is known for his tireless campaign for a gun-less society. “We are able to start clean, free from any moral blemish, and not affected by the controversies of the last election.”

What exactly is a “servant leader”? Pacheco likens a servant leader with Christ, who washed the feet of His disciples. Pacheco explains, “To lead, one has to serve.” He echoes the teaching of Christ, “He who is first must be last.”

“This servant-leadership is quite unlike the behavior of many of our politicians today,” Pacheco continues. “There is so much wanton greed, so much lording over one’s followers, so much vanity, arrogance, deception, and hypocrisy. Moral principles are set aside in pursuit of power. Corruption and unethical practices abound.”

What makes Ang Kapatiran a different kind of political party?

“In Ang Kapatiran, principles and platform come first before personalities,” Pacheco states. “This is not so with traditional political parties, which promote personalities, patronage, and pay-off. The people have grown accustomed to focusing on celebrity politics or the politics of personality resulting in the wholesale failure of the people to express their collective aspirations, what they want to become, the kind of society they want to have, and how to move from the present condition to the condition they want to reach.”

Pacheco continues, “With common good as its ideology, Ang Kapatiran is founded on ‘rock’ made up of universal principles such as the dignity of human life, solidarity, preferential option for the poor, rights of workers, dignity of labor, peace, active nonviolence, and progressive disarmament. Ang Kapatiran plays the role of catalyst and broker for the people’s aspirations. The Filipino should be a stakeholder in the party and not a mere onlooker.

“Ang Kapatiran promotes the politics of virtue, duty, good citizenship, transparency, and public accountability. Our party believes that the cultivation of virtue makes individuals happy, wise, competent, and courageous. The result is a good person, responsible citizen, and trusted leader. Without a virtuous people, society cannot function well. Without a virtuous society, individuals cannot realize their own or the common good.”

“Ang Kapatiran is the antidote to trapo-ism,” adds Pacheco.

For those unfamiliar with Philippine politics, the coined term trapo-ism has a double meaning: trapo is a nickname for traditional politics, but at the same time trapo is a Filipino word that means dirty rags, a phrase that connotes all the negative aspects of traditional Philippine politics.

At the core of the tenets of Ang Kapatiran is the belief in non-violent change. “We want to change the politics of guns, goons, and gold. Non-violent change also means elections, whether snap or regular. A snap or special election may happen. No one is certain what’ll happen,” Pacheco says, referring to the current volatile situation in the Philippines.

The vision of Ang Kapatiran is a Philippine society where everyone can live life in its fullness; its mission is to build a nation of character. In Ang Kapatiran, the moral, intellectual, and physical fitness of the candidates and a platform with clear and specific policy objectives go together. “One without the other is useless,” states Pacheco.

The party is now actively recruiting members from which servant leaders will emerge. Individuals interested in joining the party and running for public office may log on to www.kpkcommongood.blogspot.com to know more about the party. Party membership is a condition precedent to becoming a candidate. A candidate must be a registered member of Ang Kapatiran, have all the qualifications required by the Constitution and the laws, believe in and live by the founding principles of the party, accept and pledge to implement the platform in its totality, accept the notion of servant-leader, be morally, physically and technically fit to serve, have a university or a college degree, have not been convicted of any crime involving moral turpitude, and observe the party’s code of conduct, rules, and regulations.

Interested potential candidates for national office (for the positions of President, Vice President, and Senator) are requested to submit their bio-data together with a recent photograph to the Qualification Committee of Ang Kapatiran at the following address: 377 Columbia Street, Greenhills East, Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila. For inquiries, call or fax 6352796, or e-mail alliance_commongood@yahoo.com.

Those applying must indicate on the cover letter of their application the region they are from and the office(s) they are interested in ranked according to preference.

Ang Kapatiran invites all Filipinos of goodwill to become its members and make a difference. Pacheco states, “There is no socio-political transformation until the people themselves say what kind of society they want and how to pass from their present condition to the condition they want to reach.”

Pacheco appeals to every patriotic Filipino, “We can’t rebuild this nation without you.”

 

Ruby Ann Kagaoan – Calo is a freelance writer, author, and book editor. She is a charter member of Ang Kapatiran. Email her at rubycalo@yahoo.com

 

Why Is Our Country What It Is Today?

by Ruby Ann Kagaoan – Calo

 

IT SEEMED INNOCENTLY ASKED in a small group of “home-school mothers,” that is, mothers whose children are home-schooled and who are the teachers of their children, the question, “So why is our country what it is today?”

The subject being discussed was “teaching History.” I was part of that small group, having a home-schooled 13-year-old daughter in Grade 7 and that small group was comprised of parents of Grades 6 and 7 home-school students. The facilitator, a fellow home-school mother, happened to be looking at me when she asked, as though I had the ready answer to that enigmatic question.

“Well,” I said, a bit jolted out of my listening mode and now readying myself to share my nugget of insight, “I know you’ve heard this many times, but I think it’s really true: Corruption is the main reason for our poverty.”

I thought that they would find my answer a cliché not worth probing into, but there they were, ready to hear some more from me.

So I went on. “Consider how Israel has turned their deserts into productive lands,” I said. “The Philippines is so rich in natural resources, and yet we are so poor. Why? Because of corruption. Corruption has become endemic to the Philippines.”

At this point, a mother tried to reinforce my opinion by saying, “The Filipinos are really corrupt.” On hearing this, I clarified my point. “No, it’s not the Filipinos; it’s the system that has become entrenched in our country. Why is it that when you take the Filipinos out of this country, they thrive, they succeed?” That question made the mothers rethink their assessment of who we are as a people. It was like an “aha” or a “light bulb” experience. Our self-image as a people has certainly been trodden, and we need to see who we really are as a people.

“We have been slaves for centuries,” pointed out the facilitator.

“Oh, but you are looking at only our history during the Spanish times and onwards,” I answered.

Again, the mothers seemed to have been shaken out of a certain mode of thinking. They realized that indeed we Filipinos know very little of who we were before Spain colonized us. I pointed out to them that the Philippine History books that we use in schools go back only as far as our Hispanic times, but we had a “pre-Hispanic” past when our archipelago had great kingdoms and was an established destination for trade.

I shared with the home-school mothers some stories about our “pre-Hispanic” history like the little-known anecdotes about the greatness of Princess Urduja who ruled a pre-Hispanic northern kingdom in our archipelago. Also, being married to a Butuanon, I had a reservoir of stories about the Butuan Kingdom that I shared with them. “Before there was the Philippines, there was the Butuan Kingdom, Dr. Sonia Zaide wrote in her monograph Butuan: The First Kingdom,” I said to them. Just a few notes and samplings of our glorious past before we were subjugated by Spain were enough to inspire these women, who have taken upon themselves to personally educate their children.

I expressed to these mothers a conclusion. I said, “I believe that if we could go back to our roots before the Spanish came and realize that we are a great people, we would be able to rebuild our national identity and move forward better as a people.”

I quoted to them what I had heard from Filipino author and sociologist and President of the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture (ISACC), Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay, who in turn quoted from a book, “If you want to have an impact in history, you must first be rooted in a place.” Dr. Maggay further said, “When people are oppressed, they mal-adjust to the oppressive structures.” This is how she explained the negative traits that have developed in the Filipino since oppressive nations ruled our people.

We therefore should know our real roots as a race before nations came to rule over us so that we can define our true traits as a people before we mal-adjusted to oppressive structures. If we make the effort to discover our pre-Hispanic past, then we shall see that Filipinos are not intrinsically corrupt, otherwise we would not have been for a thousand years, before Spain arrived, a great trading destination; that we Filipinos are not meant to be in mere servitude to other nations for our islands and our forefathers were known for the gold they possessed. When we realize this, we can move ourselves out of the “we are a corrupt people” mode and “we are slaves” mode and say to ourselves instead, “I belong to a great and blest race and I will be part of making this nation great again.”

Ruby Ann Kagaoan-Calo is a contributing writer of the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture (ISACC, Tel. 922-9420) and member of the national movement Kapatiran Sa Pangkalahatang Kabutihan (KPK, also known as the Alliance For The Common Good, http://kpkcommongood.blogspot.com). Ruby’s daughter Nicole has been a student of The Master’s Academy Home School, http://www.tmahomeschool.ccf.org.ph). Send comments to rubycalo@yahoo.com.