Written by Phillip Ting | 16 June 2010

Last Saturday, June 12, before proceeding to Union Square in downtown San Francisco for the Philippine Independence Day celebration, members of USP4NM, which stands for US Pinoys for Noynoy-Mar, held a victory luncheon at the Philippine consulate. I was asked to deliver the final remarks.

Typical of Pinoy gatherings in America, there was food aplenty and there was entertainment to liven up the usually dull speeches. But lawyers Rodel Rodis and Ted Laguatan, co-chairs of USP4NM, were anything but dull. They were upbeat. In fact, to say that they were upbeat would be an understatement. They were triumphant. And deservedly so. They had worked long and hard to rally the FilAm community to raise funds and get the vote out for Noynoy and Mar, under the untiring leadership of Loida Nicolas-Lewis and the magical talent of community leader Charito Benipayo for raising funds and soliciting food donations.

 

That Mar Roxas had lost to Jojo Binay did not dampen the occasion. The party simply focused on Noynoy Aquino as the Hope of the Motherland. Such was the theme of the speeches of Rodel and Ted, as well as the remarks and the cheers of the Pinoys who crowded into the consular social hall.

It made me feel almost like a killjoy when my turn to speak came. I said that if they expected Noynoy Aquino to singlehandedly bring on a new era of prosperity, honesty, integrity, and competence to the Motherland, they were wrong.

"He can try and he can lead," I said. "But he cannot do it alone. If we do not help him, he will fail."

As a Filipino, I am by nature, optimistic. But as a lifelong journalist, I tend to be cynical. We Pinoys have this great talent for seeing the positive in the most negative situations, exemplified by the sick joke of Bentot, that comedian of a bygone era. He cheerfully invited the whole neighborhood to his house because there was a big happening.

"Patay ang tatay ko!"(My father died).

From the commemoration of our short-lived Philippine independence, declared on June 12, 1898, and very quickly aborted by America, to the observance of the fall of Bataan and Corregidor, we tend to celebrate heroic occasions even when they end in failure or defeat. Thus, we extol the triumphs of People Power One and People Power Two and readily blame our leaders for the disappointments that followed.

We hardly ever blame ourselves.

The harsh fact is that, as a people, we have this great talent for celebrating a victory and then, the following day, leaving it up to our leaders to do the dirty work. That was what happened after both "revolutions." Having helped win them, we left it up to the new leaders to clean up the mess left by the past administrations, to institute reforms, and to ward off the assorted oppositionists, obstructionists, vested interests, sycophants, opportunists, leftists, intriguers, and manipulators that came with the territory.

Is it any wonder that the promises of People Power One and People Power Two fell far short of expectations? In fact, in the case of the second "uprising," our hapless state deteriorated from bad to worse. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo felt entitled to abuse her powers and schemed to perpetuate herself. Our country had to endure nine years of Arroyo and her family -- and we haven't seen the last of them.

And now, we have the equivalent of People Power Three. A different kind of revolution, where people volunteered, campaigned, and voted for change.

Unfortunately, this one is bound to fail again if we expect the new president to perform miracles and solve the problems of the country by himself.

Too many of us are weekend warriors. We fight the wars and then, having won them, we deposit our armor in the closet and go back to our normal lives, forgetting what it was we fought so hard for. Then when things go bad, we complain and blame our leaders. And then another crisis arises and we bring out our armor and go to the streets again.

We not only expect the new leaders to carry the burden of the nation on their shoulders by themselves, we also feel entitled to share the spoils of victory without acknowledging our share of the load.

We also make loud noises about official misconduct but hardly ever go beyond complaining. Exposés by media deal mostly with dark hints and innuendoes but often fail to name names. Congressional investigations are occasions for getting publicity mileage for the inquisitors, but we hear no uproar from the masses and from civil society.

Noynoy Aquino is about to assume the most difficult, the most challenging job of any person in the country. His successes will have many fathers. But his failures will be orphans like him.

For sure, he will have tremendous powers to wield, but because he has to delegate many of those powers, the prospect of abuse by those to whom he delegates them is real. Yet, the buck stops with him. He will have to take the blame.

For that reason, the temptation to centralize all functions rather than to delegate will be difficult to resist. If he succumbs to the temptation, a whole new set of problems will besiege him. It's damn if he does and damn if he doesn't. But that comes with the job.

In considerably more modest circumstances, I can appreciate what President Noynoy (or is it P-Noy?) has to go through.

When I was persuaded to run for the position of national chairman of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), the largest coalition of Filipino organizations and advocacy groups in the US, I was asked, along with another contender, what we proposed to do should either of us be elected.

Ernie Ramos of Florida, one of our community's finest and most dedicated leaders, vowed to work "24/7" for the federation, pointing out that he was already retired and could afford the time.

My response took the congregation by surprise: "I'm going to make all of you work. If you expect the chairman to do all the work, you're wrong and we probably don't deserve to have an organization like NaFFAA."

Surprisingly, I was elected. Not surprisingly, the 12 regions of NaFFAA responded heroically to my challenge. In the face of a crunching recession in America, where the usual sources of funding have faded and the federation has been running virtually on empty, NaFFAA lives on. The regions have taken responsibility for their respective missions and advocacies, thus enabling the federation to perform its mandate.

It was in this context that I addressed the triumphant members of USP4NM last Saturday.

"We helped Noynoy win," I said. "Now, we must help him succeed. Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we work."

Indeed, each one of us can do something to help the new government achieve its goals. It shouldn't take a John F. Kennedy to remind us to ask not what the country can do for us but to ask what we can do for the country.

After the platitudes, it's back to the hard grind. Or Noynoy will fail, as well as the rest of us.

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