Power and responsibility
An empowering and peaceful new year to everyone!
The year 2013 is another crucial time for decision-making, especially at the local and national levels, it being an election year. May our people learn from the lessons of the past and choose leaders whom we deserve—selfless, prioritize the people’s welfare and our planet’s, open to the ideas of the constituents and ethical.
It was with mixed admiration and longing that I shared with my family and friends yesterday the admirable story of Uruguay President José Mujica, known as Pepe to his compatriots. He lives a simple and austere existence in the same house that he has lived for years with his wife, has only two plainclothes men as bodyguards and shuns the trappings of power traditionally accorded high officials. The New York Times quoted him as saying and lamenting that “many societies considered economic growth a priority, calling this “a problem for our civilization” because of the demands on the planet’s resources. He looks forward to farming once his term ends.
President Mujica is indeed a rare public servant who is grounded, not addicted to power and who realizes fully well the dangerous consequences of overshooting the earth’s carrying capacity.
More than ever, in this era of disasters and climate change, this country of ours merits leaders like him who realize that by prioritizing the integrity of our ecosystems, the resiliency of its people, especially those most dependent on our vanishing resources, will be strengthened.
As a nation, may we be more discerning and elect genuine servant leaders, and not be carried away by riches, rhetoric and empty promises that are like bubbles that disappear once the longed-for electoral victory is clinched.
Haven’t we had more than enough leaders who conveniently forget that public office is a position not just of power, but of tremendous responsibility?
Whether real or imagined, the powers of these officials are limited by the Constitution and the laws which public servants commit to follow and obey upon taking their oath of office.
Remember the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Great power involves great responsibility.”
Yet, no thanks to our obsession with patronage politics, the consequent fusion of one’s personality with the office, our still weak-as-a-baby institutions, and our forgiving mores that get abused once too often, the Rule of Law is relegated to the background.
It is no wonder that environmental laws are basically treated as plans, visions and goals, but not as responsibilities that must be enforced by implementers and regulators, irrespective of personalities or political affiliations.
Is it any surprise that while millions of public funds are being spent by local government units for luxurious vans and vehicles, none has been expended for air and water quality monitoring equipment? Budgetary allocations for social services and disaster risk reduction and management program take second fiddle to infrastructure or projects that are clearly proprietary, not public, in character. These projects have become hodge-podge and discretionary, without comprehensive participatory planning at that, despite stiff pronouncements in the Local Government Code and special laws to prioritize essential services and integrate human rights, climate change and disaster risk reduction and management in all policies, programs and projects.
Has any local chief executive been held accountable for such wrongful deviation? None that I know of.
The lack of accountability for one’s sins of omission has become pervasive and downright dangerous.
Just think of the millions of our compatriots still languishing in evacuation centers, seemingly unaware that calamities might have been the trigger but are not the probable cause of the dire condition they now find themselves in.
The current spectacle at the Capitol with the suspended governor holding on to the four walls of her office, bereft of any power to govern and issue orders, is a clear example of the prevailing culture of entitlement.
If the surveys conducted by media outlets are to be the gauge, people clamor for the suspension order to be implemented for public service, order and stability to be restored.
But, the Executive Department is surprisingly not moving. By its inaction, it is sending alarming signals that power and responsibility need not co-exist and that it is alright to make a mockery of a valid order of the President. Or, could it be that it too is uncertain of its legality?
Are we not inviting chaos and lawlessness with this inexplicable tolerance of the current state of affairs in the province of Cebu?
Who suffers? Certainly not the suspended governor who basks in the air-conditioned office and the nationwide publicity that her defiance of the presidential order has generated.
The public, as always, suffers.
What’s next?
* * *
We mourn the tremendous loss of children’s rights defender, a friend and a colleague at the University of Cebu College of Law, lawyer Cheryl Cabutihan. She passed away peacefully while we were all busy preparing for the onset of the new year. Cheryl was a committed law professor and people’s lawyer, who shared her talent and time with the young and the vulnerable and public servants alike, and who never flinched when the rights of children were attacked. She was a shining star in the lives of her family, relatives, colleagues, students, friends and classmates. We are grateful for the blessing of knowing and sharing precious moments with and learning from her.
