If I were the President

If I were the President

The late US President John F. Kennedy once said “We need men who can dream of things that never were.” I wonder if I am one of those men mentioned by President Kennedy since when I was younger I had been a dreamer of grand things likes becoming the president of this country. I was one of those who obsessed about this grand hope and impossible dream. However, as I wrote in my article “To stop monsters, RP needs good citizens” (PDI 1/7/2009), I no longer have that dream.

Truth to tell, when I was elected as municipal councilor of Aparri, I told myself that that could be the start of my journey to realize my dream. But I grew increasingly frustrated with our political system that only the elite politicians seem to have the privilege to be elected into the high echelons of the government including the presidency and the poor and marginalized are sidelined to bit players only.

From the time I was municipal councilor of Aparri, for almost 18 years now, to date I keep in my wallet together with a pocket prayer book given by a priest-friend, my programs of government if I were the president of this country. I would do these dozen things:
1. Stop jueteng and other illegal gambling;
2. Put a blanket ban on small and large scale mining;
3. Fight the drug menace;
4. Restore ethics and morality in the government;
5. No relative would be hired in the government service;
6. My wife would be my personal chef and would spend full-time as a mother to our kid(now we have four);
7. I would not extend my term of office and abide by the constitutional term-limits;
8. Make government officials and employees accountable and responsible for their actions;
9. I would make national government plans and projects locally relevant;
10. Education, health care, technology, agriculture, business, and tourism would be my core programs;
11. I would not encroach the powers of congress and judiciary; and, finally,
12. I would listen to the people, act as their public servant in order to serve and not as a King to be served.

Grand programs of government, aren’t they? Ironically, their seeming impossibility is a refection of the sad social reality we are in. I am reminded that Plato wrote the Republic because of the irremediably corrupted Athenian politics during his time.