Competence and experience vs. integrity

VICE President Jojo Binay couldn’t have been more correct in asserting that we should entrust the country to experienced and competent leaders.

But he also couldn’t have been more wrong in implying that honesty and integrity occupy a lower rung than experience and competence in the hierarchy of values required of a leader especially the president.

“Walang alam,” that was how they derided the late Mrs. Corazon Aquino when she ran against Ferdinand Marcos in the 1986 snap elections. She is just an ordinary housewife who belongs in the kitchen, her critics sneered.

Marcos and his minions had reason to gloat; he was a bar topnotcher who served in various capacities in government, including as Senate president, until he became the 10th president of the Philippine Republic in 1965. And Cory? Her most important part in running the government until her husband’s assassination, it was said, was serving coffee to their guests.

It turned out that bar topnotcher Marcos had to cheat massively in order to thwart the plain Mrs. Aquino’s challenge and although he was eventually proclaimed winner, the election fraud that attended his reelection triggered such public anger and condemnation as to fan the fires of Edsa 1, which resulted in his banishment from Malacañang.

While the experienced and competent Marcos was in Hawaii, the ordinary but honest and morally upright housewife went on to govern the country effectively, nurturing our newly restored democracy while fending off one coup attempt after another by ambitious and power-hungry military leaders and their civilian allies.

History repeated itself in 2010 when Noynoy Aquino found himself thrust from relative anonymity into the limelight by his mother’s death. He was a reluctant candidate for president, obviously aware of his lack of experience and preparedness.

When he finally agreed to run, his critics immediately harped on his lack of experience and his lackluster performance as a member of the House and, later, as a senator. In the midst of all these, all that Aquino could do was promise to follow the straight path, if and when he won.

It’s a promise that he has kept and, to the chagrin of those who boldly predicted that he would fall flat on his face because of his supposed incompetence, he actually has some measure of success as the country’s top leader such as in restoring investor’s confidence in our economy.

Binay’s remarks about competence and experience were an apparent swipe at Sen. Grace Poe, whose name is now being frequently mentioned as Aquino’s candidate to succeed him in 2016. Among all the so-called presidentiables, Poe has the most realistic chance, according to the surveys, of beating Binay.

As Marcos was to Cory Aquino, Binay is definitely superior in experience and, perhaps, in competence to Poe. Before his election to the vice presidency, he was mayor of Makati for many years. Poe, on the other hand, only has her stint as Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) to show, aside from her being a senator.

But in contrast to Binay, Poe doesn’t have any allegations of corruption hounding her. In fact, her image remains squeaky clean even two years into her term in the Senate.

Binay, on the other hand, still has to fully explain why his bank accounts and those of his supposed dummies contain so much money, in amounts that are grossly disproportionate to their earning capacities.

Sadly for him, our experience with past administrations has shown that it is extremely risky to entrust the government to those without integrity even if he happens to have an abundance of experience and competence.