Beyond politics

FOR virtually all of us, few other topics can rivet our attention more than politics. The political stage is always open, and at any given time there can be a political drama being played out, sometimes with lights that are blinding, and sounds that are deafening. The latest twists and turns of that political drama are the grist for endless commentary and speculation. This at both the national and local levels!

In many ways, this is healthy. We do need a certain level of political consciousness and participation. We do need our public and community affairs to be out there, conducted in the open, with effective mechanisms for almost immediate feedback and regular accountability. Moreover, public opinion on many key issues affecting the public welfare has to be given a wide enough space for it to take shape and form.

Nevertheless, we do need to graduate to a higher level of citizenship and political activism:

• There is so much more to politics than popularity. It is not enough for politicians to attract votes and swing sympathy towards them. It is also necessary that they perform, following a strategy, delivering breakthrough results that help build and shape the long-term future of our local communities and our national polity. The metrics of performance that contributes to solid nation-building go way beyond the number of goodies politicians can distribute, courtesy of the local or national public treasury. Performance, to truly count, has to be of a game-changing, transformative character that delivers outcomes with deep and significant socio-economic impact.

• In much of what plays out in our political theater, there is so much sloganeering, posturing, long-winded speech-making, and carnival-type gesturing and play-acting. All this is good

for our people’s entertainment. However, public and community affairs are clamoring for more substantive attention, more systematic action, and more concrete accomplishments, plus more strategic and systemic thinking. Thus far, most of us are so busy enjoying the first that we fail to give any interest and support to the second.

• Many of us can be harsh in our judgment of those invested with public office. Critical commentary on our public officials can be hard and severe. This can have great merit, and freedom of speech and the freedom for critical thinking should in no way be compromised. But if that is all we do, i.e., criticise, then nothing much else would happen. The wider and bigger tasks that nation-building demands would not draw the attention and elicit the participation as well as contribution from the ordinary citizenry they deserve. We would then be a nation of critics and verbal snipers instead of as many of us, ordinary citizens, becoming genuine governance advocates and participants.

From ordinary Filipino citizens who today are dazzled by political theater, where getting the biggest billing is the sure way to win political power, where political play-acting is given a very high premium, and where political criticism is a national pastime, we need to transform ourselves. In the five decades up ahead, as we build Dream PH, we should train our focus more: on performance that delivers strategic outcomes for our people: on a few, clear, well selected priorities systematically pursued through meaningful action programs, with measurable results that then are objectively and regularly monitored; and on working together with other sectors such that we all can contribute substantively to public programs with high social-economic impact on our communities.

Can we do this? Of course, the Filipino can! Indeed, the Filipino must!