Reaction Paper on the article: Leadership and the common good by Randy David : Public Lives, Philippine Daily Inquirer Sunday, Jan. 9, 2005.
" A style of leadership breeds its own followers"... A few years ago, I was given the opportunity to head a certain group of young people in our community. Be being a leader I was able to experience a lot of challenges: difficult situations to face, difficult people to handle and difficult decisions to make. But all these things were able to pull out the best in me, I could not have passed all these tests without the support, love and cooperation of my members... they are my strength, my inspiration. How I would like to imagine that our leaders feel the same way.
Every Filipino dreams that one-day, we would be saved by a great leader who will pull us out of poverty and free from the dictates of other powerful nations. For more than once we have shown the world the power our people through bloodless revolutions that made us inspire and earn the respect of other nations. Plagued by amnesia, our resounding voices were easily silenced and our flaming spirit gone cold. We were unable to sustain the energy that we had... thinking that change will be that simple... that easy... that sudden. Indeed the Arroyo government survives not because of active support of the Filipino people, but because the alternative was unthinkable. For a while let us put aside our negative comments, we may not exactly know if the administration is religiously doing its job, but we can always assess ourselves on our own performance as followers.
Most of us rely so much on our leaders, expecting them to do miracles. But we should realize that like our leaders, we are also given our own duties and responsibility. More than our idealism and daydreaming, our leaders need our support, cooperation and feedback, or all their efforts will be futile. In essence, I think that each of us needs to be a leader in our own right, to do our part of the job for us to move towards the achievement of our goals. We have always been reminded that we must carefully choose our leaders, sudden dissatisfaction are
Every Filipino dreams that one-day, we would be saved by a great leader who will pull us out of poverty and free from the dictates of other powerful nations. For more than once we have shown the world the power our people through bloodless revolutions that made us inspire and earn the respect of other nations. Plagued by amnesia, our resounding voices were easily silenced and our flaming spirit gone cold. We were unable to sustain the energy that we had... thinking that change will be that simple... that easy... that sudden. Indeed the Arroyo government survives not because of active support of the Filipino people, but because the alternative was unthinkable. For a while let us put aside our negative comments, we may not exactly know if the administration is religiously doing its job, but we can always assess ourselves on our own performance as followers.
Most of us rely so much on our leaders, expecting them to do miracles. But we should realize that like our leaders, we are also given our own duties and responsibility. More than our idealism and daydreaming, our leaders need our support, cooperation and feedback, or all their efforts will be futile. In essence, I think that each of us needs to be a leader in our own right, to do our part of the job for us to move towards the achievement of our goals. We have always been reminded that we must carefully choose our leaders, sudden dissatisfaction are
Bibliography: Editorial article: Leadership and the common good by Randy David : Public Lives, Philippine Daily Inquirer Sunday, Jan. 9, 2005