A Serious Challenge to Our Would-be Leaders

LEADERSHIP is a word that refers to the function of influencing other people to cooperate in pursuing and achieving clear collective goals. This involves two simultaneous directions of movement-- the forward movement from present reality to the desired reality, and the inward movement of consolidation or “solidification” of all participants into a greater degree of cohesion, teamwork and harmony. This presupposes clarity of goals.

Absent this, the leadership function has to start with encouraging and efficient facilitation of the consensus-building process applied to having collective clarity on the main concerns being addressed, on the general direction of the forward movement, and the specific plans that would include sub-plans and assigned specific roles.

Leadership covers Proposing and Facilitating

In this situation, the leadership function covers the presentation of well-thought-out points of attention and carefully-crafted proposals, or the act of encouraging and efficient facilitation of collective wisdom aforming, or both. Of course, the roles are discussed after the goals. Teams come after the clear syntheses of individual dreams. And finally they assign or self-assign roles to play in the implementation,

Leadership also applies to the person or group of persons actually performing such overall function. Leaderships come in two kinds— one is official leadership composed of persons elected or appointed on the basis of expectations that they would effectively perform the function; the other is natural leadership composed of persons actually performing such invaluable function in any group pursuing its common interests.

When democratic governance is undertaken by the people through elected or selected representatives in various posts of responsibility, the people have to be conscious of goals, roles, plans, obstacles and the overcoming of obstacles. We have to be conscious of our collective dreams.

Otherwise, we mix up applicants for the task of legislation with applicants for execution of laws, we mix up functions of executive functionaries who are supposed to lead in hearing and solving community problems and legislative functionaries who are supposed to consult with us to better represent our voice in making necessary laws. That is, we would only be conscious of the functionaries’ funds for generosity to their personal and narrow interests, and the elected and selected officials would just satisfy the thirst for dole-outs and they can effectively abandon their assigned roles and even make dirty money on the side.

Who have actually become the natural leaders? The civil society leaders and organizations have had to shoulder the official leaders’ functions while all the tax money paid by the people go to the latter’s pockets and bank accounts, whether as salaries or allowances or stolen money.
Meanwhile the people have come to accept as natural that we cannot realistically expect even just the basics of governance from the persons we elected or selected on the basis of generosity for giving dole-outs and job recommendations.

So, many of us have also abandoned the very basic human faculty of even just dreaming for better conditions for ourselves. We have somehow relegated dreaming only to our darkest sleeping hours. The deepest effect of disempowerment is when people no longer dare to dream and be inspired to turn the dreams to realities, and are instead preoccupied with weeping out a flood of tears to wallow in, licking of wounds and gnashing of teeth, and enjoying only the pettiest consuelo de bobo of escalator rides in cooled superstores in our country where there is virtually no production, only stores!

Restore Faith in Consequential Dreaming!

Would-be leaders of our country, in various scopes of constituency, are therefore challenged to lead in restoring our people’s faith in dreaming, in earnest and consequential dreaming. They are seriously challenged now by our heroic history to Dare Declare Your Own Doable Dreams and your Realistic Plans to Set them on the Clear Track to Fulfillment! And be earnest in making sure the people will not be frustrated and betrayed still another time by our official leaders presenting “pipe dreams,” empty promises, and later on blaming the world and even God, but never themselves and their lack of earnest effort, for have all the bitter failure their presented dreams and plans would expectedly result in.

The 18-year -old Kamalaysayan Solidarity on Sense of History launched during the 2nd Annual Pistahang Kamalaysayan a project dubbed as “Talastasan sa mga Pangarap at Balak” (Discourse on Determined Dreams Declarations to be Doable in a Dozen Years) and is now issuing this challenge to all candidates for public office in the 2010 elections. And we are actively seeking partner organizations, like futuristic groups, youth networks, schools and political organizations, in undertaking this project. In a few days, we will upload a website (http:/doable-dreams.8m.net) dedicated to this project.

We dare to challenge the candidates: Do not even file your candidacies for municipal leadership posts, let alone for national positions, if you cannot even prove that you know clearly what you would do for the fulfillment of your constituents’ dreams! Do not wait to “cross the bridge when you come to it” upon electoral victory before thinking of what you intend to do for the people’s future. Dare declare your own dream and prepare to prove that it is realistic – foresee obstacles and propose realistic ways to overcome them, ways that would not have to depend on monetary resources from external sources but on the sheer will power of the teeming hundreds of millions of Filipinos whom your leadership capability can draw in support because your dreams shall have come from them, in the first place. Will precedes the wallet!

On this matter, the late lamented Professor Nito Doria of the University of Sto. Tomas Social Research Center (UST-SRC), left us with this legacy of wisdom:

“If progress is to be shared and enjoyed by all, then it must be the achievement of all, the result of concerted effort of a responsible citizenry to make progress a way of life for the nation; not the result of some singular heroic effort of some excep­tional individual who does not exist except in myth.

“A responsible citizenry, however, is just a con­cert of responsible individual citizens libe­rated, in­formed and empowered, and made res­ponsible for their own welfare, It must ne­cessarily be in that se­quence of development, for one cannot expect to make a responsible citizen out of one who remains un-liberated, un-informed and un-empowered.

“A strategy for national progress must be an exhilarating liberating factor in the nation’s life, one that will free the Filipinos from the disquiet and listlessness generated by failed models of dogmata that have shackled their mind for centuries and in­evitably made them dependent on and beholden to the patronage of oppressive power.
“Such a strategy can be no less than a new conceptual scheme, no less than what Thomas Kuhn in a landmark dissertation, The Structure of Scien­tific Revolutions, refers to as a ‘para­digm shift.’ ”

Our sister-organization, Lambat-Liwanag Network for Empowering Paradigms, has uploaded in its “on-line library” at http://lambat-liwanag.8m.net articles promoting 15 paradigm shifts for as many concerns about human and social development. Together, Prof. Doria’s sharp discussion and Lambat-Liwanag’s empowering paradigm shifts provide possible references for anyone writing out his or her desirable and achievable dream for his or her own constituents’ march to real progress and prosperity.

Challenge: Forward to a Really-Better Future!

We challenge the candidates to declare personal commitments to personally-decided dreams and plans because the political parties in our country have remained like identical personality-centered and resources-centered social clubs, much like identical fraternities except that frat members exhibit more loyalty when they go into rumbles. Party platforms are thus merely ornaments in the highly-personalized politics of this period. Kamalaysayan lauds all who undertake efforts to pursue reforms-oriented change politics and wish them well. They are heroes and heroines and they can all mold themselves into a united force that revives by deed our heroic bayanihan tradition.

We also challenge the real statesmen and stateswomen of this nation, whether incumbent, running for election or reelection, or keeping away from electoral politics, to present declarations of their own doable dreams in order to influence the candidates and the electorate and raise the standards of what we ought to be expecting from those who seek our vote. We have sought sample declarations of dreams from the youth and we are going to upload two pieces from students, and challenge the candidates who are supposed to be more mature to address the concerns of all these very young Filipinos and Filipinas, to present superior declarations. We will also upload a poem asking Filipinos to stop weeping and start dreaming and marching for a better life for us all (see earlier post on this blogsite).

All the viewers of our dedicated website shall be the judge, and part of their judgment will be visible in the pages of this website. The invisible part will remain in their minds or be discussed among their own loosely-linked circles of discourse.

Our sense of history organization has decided to launch and facilitate this discourse project because more than reading, memorizing, and writing about past Philippine History, we want to contribute to the directions being taken and the shape of our society to be enjoyed at least a little bit more proudly by our children and our children’s children.

prof. ding reyes of subic, zambales
lead founder and national spokesperson
Kamalaysayan Solidarity on Sense of History
Makati City, September 28, 2009

See more important info in: http://kamalaysayan.8m.net/doable-dreams.htm