Filipino Obama?

(from pinoybiz.blogspot.com)

A response to Alex Magno's column, where he asked "Can there be a Filipino Obama rising to the challenge of 2010?" (Mr. Magno's column appears below.)

Mr. Magno, there is no such thing as a Filipino Obama but there is a Filipino named Gordon. More than the First Black American President, I think it is more interesting to contemplate having the First White Philippine President.

Richard J. Gordon, Senator and Philippine National Red Cross Chairman. A man who has been a leader all of his life whether he had a position in government or none and a man who has served his countrymen, even to the point of risking his own life -- not once, but many times over the course of 40 years -- all for the cause of alleviating human suffering.

While all the other aspirants for the Presidency in 2010 are promising, Gordon is the only one with the longest track record of success as an Executive. While others are selling dreams, people whose lives he has touched are living the reality of a better life... In Olongapo, in Subic, in all the tourist destinations all over the country promoted through Wowphilippines, in disaster areas rehabilitated through the efforts of the Philippine National Red Cross, and soon, when the Automated Elections system is finally online in 2010, all over the country as they finally do away with the antiquated mano mano system of recording and tallying votes.

You want to talk about inspiring leadership?

Anybody can be inspiring during good times when most people are happy and content. With a very publicized speech, a little advertisement here, a few well placed articles in a well read newspaper or magazine, and a couple of guest appearances with some other popular masa personality 'et voila!' even the do nothing political john doe can become an inspiring brand.

Try being an inspiring leader when the streets are a mess, crime is everywhere, and most people have lost belief in themselves. That was Olongapo in 1980. That was the time when Gordon ran for Mayor. That was the time when things began turning around for the sin city just outside of Subic. The first color coded traffic scheme, the first integrated garbage collection system, community based anti-crime campaigns, legalization of scavenging -- the pre-cursor to recycling, and much more. In less than six years, the transformation was made from sin city to model city. It was awarded the UNESCO Cities for Peace representing Asia and the Pacific in 1997 and the Konrad Adenauer Local Medal of Excellence in 1999. The Asian Development Bank and World Bank recognized its successful urban redevelopment and city development strategy after the US Base turnover.

Sure, you can say that that was just Olongapo City. Okay, then, how about Subic? That's an easy transformation job too, or was it?

The Americans left the Subic Naval base practically bare and it happened hardly a year after Pinatubo buried most of Central Luzon -- including Olongapo -- in ash. Think about just how inspirational you have to be as a leader when you are trying to get your people, just barely recovering from the biggest natural disaster in Philippine history, to volunteer to maintain the base and its facilities for nothing but the promise of maybe someday attracting investors and tourists. (The idea was so far fetched at the time that you might as well have been talking about promoting tourism in Basilan and Sulu at the outbreak of full scale military operations.)

You know what, despite the naysayers, Gordon made Subic into a premiere tourist and investment destination. Some 40,000 jobs were lost when the Americans left, 80,000 new and higher paying jobs were created when Gordon tookover Subic. Tens of millions of pesos of income were lost when US servicemen stopped coming, but billions of dollars flowed when Gordon started promoted Subic to the world.

He did such a good job at Subic that the next President after Ramos kicked him out with administrative order number 1 -- all because Gordon picked up a cigarette but from the street he swept thousands of times himself.

Still easy? Okay, how about promoting Philippine tourism at a time when there were coup attempts, terrorist threats, negative travel advisories weekly, a scant tourism promotion budget, a lazy Tourism bureaucracy, and whatever else.

A year into his job, Gordon reversed the shrinking tourist arrivals and by 2004, the country played host to two million tourists a year. The success continues as the country continues to draw 3 million tourists and if the tourism bill Gordon is working on gets passed into law, that figure might double or triple in no time at all.

He's no superman, that is for sure. In fact, the truth is, he is hard of hearing. He can't hear the word IMPOSSIBLE. He can't hear the phrase IT CAN'T BE DONE. He just goes ahead and does it.

There is one more flaw that Gordon has: He is white.

It is true that his father was an American.

James L. Gordon was so much of an American that when time came for him to chose between retaining his American citizenship and becoming a Filipino, he did what a number of Filipinos would not do if given a choice: He CHOSE to be a FILIPINO.

He was so much of an American that he spent the best years of his life serving his countrymen of choice, Filipinos, as mayor.

He was shot dead by an assassin just when he was about to succeed in having Congress grant Cityhood to Olongapo. As tens of thousands marched in his funeral procession, Senator Jose W. Diokno paid tribute to him with these words: "He was born to an American father, chose to be a Filipino, raised his children as Filipinos, served his country as a Filipino, and died a Filipino hero"

Yes, Richard Gordon is white but the only thing American about him is his work ethic and his straightforwardness.

So, going back to where I started. There is no Filipino Obama, but try this parallelism on for size: How about electing the first WHITE Filipino President?


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Obama
FIRST PERSON
By Alex MagnoTuesday,
The Philippine Star
February 12, 2008

Barack Obama had the odds stacked against him all his life. He said so himself as he celebrated his sweep of four state primaries last weekend, bringing him in dead heat with his rival for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton.

Born to a Kenyan father and a white American woman, he was abandoned by his father when he was two. His teenage mother and his grandparents raised him in humble circumstances. He spent a few years of his youth in Indonesia and served poor communities as an activist in his early adult years.

He served as state Senator before winning a seat at the US Senate three years ago. Charismatic and articulate, Obama sought his party's presidential nomination even as everybody considered the Democratic Party apparatus firmly under the stranglehold of the Clinton couple.

Until the onset of the primaries season, Obama was considered an outside runner, a novelty at best. There was no way, everyone thought that an African-American, one with few friends in the nation's capital, would have very poor chances in this game.

But when the primaries began to be held, Obama turned in more than a respectable performance. He pulled off a couple of upsets in the early races, gradually built momentum on his side and, last weekend, swept the four states that were contested.

The Democratic Party base is now divided right down the middle. Hillary Clinton is popular among lower-class women voters, Hispanics and those on the lower end of educational achievement. Obama attracts African-Americans, the college-educated and, overwhelmingly, the young voters.

In an unprecedented way, the primaries in the US has generated worldwide interest mainly because the probable Democratic nominee will either be a woman or a black man. The US presidency has, heretofore, been a post for white males.

Over and above considerations of race and gender, the Obama campaign appears to have animated a movement that now seems highly inspired and determined to challenge the insiders in the party as well as existing paradigms of what politicians should do or say.

Obama appears to have detected a strong undercurrent in American society. It is an undercurrent of discontent with politics-as-usual reflected in rising political apathy. Electoral participation among young voters has been declining. Significant minority groups have not been participating at all in the democratic exercise.

He has tapped into this undercurrent and tapped it well. The undercurrent itself now appears to be much more powerful than anyone calculated. Much more powerful, in fact, than maybe Obama himself ever imagined.

In the Democratic Party fund-raising dinner last Saturday, people turned up as early as dawn to ensure seats for themselves so that they can listen to Obama. Across the US, an army of young volunteers has been making the phone calls and knocking on doors to campaign for Obama.
This campaign is unusual, to say the least. It is no ordinary contest for one party's presidential nomination. It is a movement of the discontented attracted to the promise of change. More than that, it is an open rebellion against the entrenched political aristocracy in Washington DC.
It is not just the unpopularity of George W. Bush that is driving this phenomenon. It is the unpopularity of the political establishment no less that is driving this rebellion.

The Other America, the one that shunned the political process before, has now barged into that process, responding to Obama's clarion call for a sweeping change of how America has been run and how it has been governed.

What started out as a seemingly quixotic campaign has now become an intensely passionate political force. It is a force that will, at the very least, change the way the Democratic party deals with its constituencies. At its very best, it will change the way America chooses its leaders.
This phenomenon is not led by a John, a George or a Ronald. It is led by a Barack, one who has managed to inspire with words and move people with a compelling vision for his country.
Color of skin aside, Obama has been compared to John F. Kennedy. The comparison has served the candidate well and he has made it a point to quote the well-loved Kennedy extensively in his speeches as well as match the polished prose.

Kennedy, in the early sixties, rocked the political establishment, redefined the office he eventually occupied (albeit briefly) and awakened an entire generation of Americans. The young Americans today who volunteer for the Obama campaign are the children of the generation JFK animated.

There is, to be sure, a lot of energy in the Obama campaign. But there is a lot of talent there as well, enough to enable this campaign to carefully calibrate its moves and sharpen its rhetoric. Enough talent to enable this campaign to overcome the entrenched party bureaucracy, outwit the rival campaigns and nurse a certain tone essential to keeping a movement animated.

Perhaps more than the Americans, there is a lot of discontent among Filipinos over the quality of governance they have been forced to accept and the quality of political leadership that has been available. There is discontent over how we do our politics and how power has been wielded.
There is no shortage here of people who seek to win the highest elective post. But there is scarcity, obviously, of real leaders emerging from the margins and challenging the system. Leaders who can inspire and arrest the drift of public cynicism. Leaders who can make us hope again.

Can there be a Filipino Obama rising to the challenge of 2010?

Gordon flattered by endorsement of Cebu gov for 2010

Senator Richard Gordon said Sunday he was flattered by the endorsement of Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia for his planned presidential bid in the 2010 elections.

Gordon noted that Garcia made the endorsement with still two years to go before the elections when all other officials would be averse to laying down their cards this early.

“Obviously, she's not afraid to make her choice known for principled leadership,” Gordon said.

By tradition, local officials hold off naming their bets in the election until they are aware of the winning chances of each candidate.

Gordon himself has yet to decide whether to make a go for the country's highest post.

Garcia reiterated her support for Gordon's presidential bid in a recent television interview despite being courted by more high-profile and deep-pocketed presidentiables licking their chops on the vote-rich province.

“I'll support him (if he finally decides to run). I've always admired his style, he's definitely ready to run the country,” said Garcia in an interview over ANC television.

“I really think that he shone more brilliantly when he was in a chief executive job,” Garcia noted.

Garcia's support for Gordon stemmed from the senator's consistent support for the development of Cebu as an equal of “Imperial Manila.” Gordon has been lobbying to have a statue of Mactan's hero, Lapu-Lapu, erected at the Luneta in Manila.

The former Olongapo City mayor and Subic Freeport's founder has been cited as among the possible candidates of the administration in 2010.

Cebu, which delivered the winning margin for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2004, could also be pivotal in 2010, especially with half a dozen candidates likely to join the race and the winner likely to win by a slim plurality or at most a quarter of the votes.

Gordon has raised the possibility of taking Garcia as a possible running mate in 2010, considering her impressive track record in making Cebu move closer to its goal of becoming an economic powerhouse. /Inquirer
Cebu Daily News

'I've earned it,' he asserts as new org gets Ilonggo members

Of all the reported presidentiables come 2010, Senator Richard "Dick" Gordon wants the voting the public to know that he and he alone is the most qualified. In fact, asked on said much-publicized reports, the Senator has a ready and quick response – "I've earned it."

Such formed part the answers of Senator Gordon in a press conference Sunday. With series of questions primarily raised on his supposed sure candidacy, Gordon used the opportunity to lay down his credentials.

More than two decades of executive work and management, he said that dated back to his years as delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention. Such followed suit by his years in public office as mayor of Olongapo City.

"Let the good times roll," Senator Gordon said in jest while adding that until the decision is reached, his concentration for the moment remains on his Senate work.

Yet while at it, rounds are being made nationwide to launch Gordon's group cum movement called "Bagumbayan."

An apparent move to set up mass-bases all over the country, Senator Gordon only has the highest of hopes and praises for the group and ideals set forth by it.

"If the country is corrupt, it is because most of us allow it… Bagumbayan will change that. Our time, our change... that is what we are here for. We are the change that we want to be," he said.

Flyers distributed to the media calls on membership "open to all Filipinos from all walks of life. No ifs, no buts. If you can commit yourself to our covenant to change this nation from what it is to what it can be, and if you can believe in yourself and your community to make that change happen, then Bagumbayan and its ideal are yours."

Among those present with Senator Gordon were former city councilors Mandrei Malabor and Rolando Dabao. Also seen were former Iloilo City Liga president, Marietta Orleans and former Iloilo City Mayor Mansueto Malabor.
By Florence F. Hibionada - www.thenewstoday

Gordon: Charter bans Estrada from 2010 presidential polls

Gordon admitted that he himself has been thinking about running for the highest position in the land. “I’m available to run for president and I've been thinking about it. I am no hypocrite,” he said, noting that since becoming mayor of Olongapo City, he had always brought the people up the social and economic scale and not just make broken promises.

Gordon: Charter bans Estrada from 2010 presidential polls

Veronica Uy - INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines -- Former president Joseph Estrada is prohibited from seeking reelection under the Constitution, Senator Richard Gordon said Thursday, laughing off news reports of Estrada’s plan to run in the 2010 polls.

“He should run just to test whether the Filipino people really wants change, or simply wants to be entertained,” he said.

Gordon admitted that he himself has been thinking about running for the highest position in the land. “I’m available to run for president and I've been thinking about it. I am no hypocrite,” he said, noting that since becoming mayor of Olongapo City, he had always brought the people up the social and economic scale and not just make broken promises.

Gordon, although affiliated with the majority in the Senate, has said that he was not with the administration and warned the political opposition about Estrada’s announced intention to run again for president.

“Surely, if Erap runs, that would divide the opposition, wouldn’t it?” said Gordon, referring to Estrada by his nickname.

He said the primary issue that would be raised against Estrada as a presidential candidate in the 2010 elections would be his record as president, especially his conviction for plunder.

“For me, what is important is the reaction of the Filipinos nationally to Estrada’s candidacy. Although we pitied him when he was under detention, we should first consider our sense of justice before our sense of pity,” he said in Filipino.

“While we all condemn graft and corruption, this is the first time that a president in our country who has been sentenced [for corruption] but has not spent a single day in [state] prison,” he said.

The possibility of Gordon and Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia running together for president and vice president, respectively, in the 2010 election, has been raised.

Bagong bayan

“For Jose Rizal, Bagumbayan was not only the place of his own heroic martyrdom, but the very home and spirit of his dream of a free and prosperous Philippines... We now invoke that spirit in our quest for an even newer Bagumbayan… Bagumbayan is no longer just a place. It is we, the Filipino people, and all that we dream of being and becoming as a nation.”

THERE’S THE RUB
By Conrado de Quiros - Philippine Daily Inquirer

Last December 30, Rizal Day, I saw an interesting ad in this newspaper. It was a call for volunteers to join a “covenant for a new Philippines,” to be called Bagumbayan. It was signed by Richard Gordon and several public and private officials.

The Bagumbayan “manifesto” notes that this country has reached the utter pits: “Fear and helplessness have led many citizens to become inured to corruption and injustice” and “despair has driven many to hard and lonely work abroad... We need change on all levels of society -- not just of men, but in men… Above all we need to think, to feel, to act once again as one nation with one destiny, building on both our brightest prospects for the future and on the noblest traditions of our history.

“For Jose Rizal, Bagumbayan was not only the place of his own heroic martyrdom, but the very home and spirit of his dream of a free and prosperous Philippines... We now invoke that spirit in our quest for an even newer Bagumbayan… Bagumbayan is no longer just a place. It is we, the Filipino people, and all that we dream of being and becoming as a nation.”

It’s not entirely new in its call for some kind of moral renewal or for new -- and young -- leaders to come forth and set this country aright, replacing despair with hope, replacing fear and helplessness with purpose and potency. Kapatiran is doing that already and has the added virtue of being a political party. Yes, virtue: Nandy Pacheco is right to say that politics is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. It is how you use politics that makes it good or bad. It behooves every reasonable person to be more, rather than less, political because that is the only way to make politics serve the nation and not screw it.

It is not original either in that it is has all the earmarks of a campaign vehicle, not unlike “Jeep ni Erap” [“Joseph Estrada’s jeepney”], which like the jeepney maker Sarao has pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth. Or which stalled long ago on a lonely road after being driven by a drunken driver and has been picked clean by the neighborhood. Gordon at least has not been coy about his presidential ambitions.

But Bagumbayan does have something new and meritorious, which is that it harks back to a storied past. Indeed, calls on Filipinos today to look back at that past and draw threads of continuity from it. I know a bit of where Gordon’s inspiration for Bagumbayan came from, and that is from the Light and Sound historical tableau offered to the public at Baluarte San Diego (a block or so away from San Agustin Church) in Intramuros. I saw it some months back and was quite impressed by its insight as much as by its artistry.

It offers the fantastic image of the Filipino struggle for liberty, or for a “bagong bayan” [new nation] (“bagumbayan” being a contraction of it), a new world, a free world, as one of breaking down walls. Not least literally, as Intramuros means Walled City. But as the tableau points out, Spanish rule did not just build physical walls, it built spiritual walls as well. The latter included the walls of social caste (the inert, or immutable, social structures of the time openly invites the word “caste”), with the “indios” [natives] occupying the lowest rung, impregnably barred from going up, and the walls of an engendered inferiority complex, which even more impregnably barred the indios from becoming free men.

Rizal’s contributions to breaking down those walls were awesome, and you can’t help but feel a great sense of loss, and anger, as Rizal’s last moments on earth are reenacted -- or more than enacted, brought to life (and death) -- in that tableau. That death, of course, brought life to this nation by giving it to glimpse what it could be, or what it could build, which was a bagong bayan, a new world, a free world. Truly, bagumbayan is more than just a place, it is vision. Truly it is more than a spot where a martyred hero died, it is a place where a nation was born.

But here’s the part where I’m unhappy with the way the framers of Bagumbayan, the covenant, envision their cause, or have set their course about. It misses a great deal of what Rizal’s wall-breaking (or ball-breaking?) was all about.

Rizal, of course, didn’t just fight Spanish tyranny by criticizing it, he fought it by proving that the indio was the equal of any Spaniard. At the time that was the most subversive thought that could ever be ventured and Rizal was doubly subversive not just by venturing the thought but by embodying it. Indeed, he was triply subversive by proving not just that he was the equal of the Spaniard overlord but was superior to him. It wasn’t entirely ironic that the Spaniards executed him for rocking their rule to the core. He did. Arguably more than even Andres Bonifacio with his Katipunan.

But Rizal did also criticize tyranny, ferociously, resolutely, if also marvelously wittily and wisely. He was a satirist par excellence and wrote savagely about the friars, in particular, in his essays and novels. He arraigned ignorance and injustice and hypocrisy and fought them at every turn with every fiber of his being. You can’t build a new world on the rotting and rotten foundations of injustice and abuse. You can only do it by razing them down.

The last is the part I don’t see in Bagumbayan, as well indeed as in other similar crusades or campaigns or movements that claim to be “positive” in presumed contrast to the “negative” one of being intolerant of intolerance. Those two -- indicting injustice and abuse and discovering loftiness of purpose -- are not opposed; they are the two sides of the same coin. Leaders do not emerge by waiting for the old and cruel ones to die or go away so that they can replace them, leaders spring forth from the smithy of struggle.

Rizal did. And so even in death birthed a bagong bayan.

Gordon-Garcia tandem 'electable'

By Ramon Tulfo - Philippine Daily Inquirer

Richard Gordon and Gwendolyn Garcia would make an excellent tandem in the 2010 presidential election.

The senator from Olongapo and the Cebu governor are sure winners—if they have the money.

Yes, Gordon is not in the surveys of possible presidential candidates at this time, but a lot of things can happen between now and 2010.

People who want order and discipline for the country—a prerequisite for economic progress—will vote for him.

After all, it was Gordon who taught Pinoys they were capable of discipline when drivers and motorists followed traffic rules at the Subic Bay Freeport complex during his term as head of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.

As for Garcia, she’s much prettier than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who was elected vice president in 1998.

Garcia will win votes among the star-struck electorate because she is prettier than some Filipino actresses.

* * *

The Gordon-Garcia tandem’s biggest hitch is that it might run on the administration ticket. In which case, they would lose because people hate President Gloria like the plague.

This was evident in the last election when the administration ticket was trounced. Even the supposedly “sure winner,” popular actor, Cesar Montano, didn’t win.

If Gordon and Garcia are serious about running in 2010 they should start dissociating themselves from the President.