General Admission
The Boss and the No. 1 servant
By Al S. Mendoza
WHY do we enter politics?
To serve the people.
What a noble deed.
The Good Book has also a good take on this: “Every leader is the No. 1 servant of the people.”
President Aquino rephrased that when he said, during his inaugural speech in 2010: “Kayo ang Boss ko (You are my Boss.)”
Boss here refers to the people, of course. His Boss are the governed—the people.
But is that really the case?
I mean, in reality, is that happening?
Years back, when Ate Glue was still president of the republic, she scolded a media person in public.
Woefully, the media person didn’t fight back. She would next sulk in the confines of her room when she got home.
Ate Glue was wrong in having done what she did, simply because a servant is not supposed to scold his/her Boss.
The media person compounded the problem when she condoned Ate Glue’s misdeed.
What the media person should have done was to remind Ate Glue, in a respectful manner, that the Boss deserves respect at all times.
The Boss elected Ate Glue president. Where Ate Glue was, she owed it all to the Boss.
It is really an irony that the people, the Boss, easily forget the role they play in a society where free elections are both the norm and the rule: They are supreme in all aspects of governance.
Same with the No. 1 servant today—P-Noy. He is a mere follower, the primary worker for the people.
Never did Jesus Christ scold any of his 12 disciples.
Not even when Judas Iscariot betrayed him.
Not even when Peter denied him three times.
Jesus Christ so loved his disciples that he even washed their feet—the apex of proofs that he is a servant and, as such, was always willing to show his love for his Boss, in deeds and in words.
Can that be said of P-Noy, of our countrymen now running positions in the May 13 polls?
To be elected carries with it power. How to use that power defines the one wielding it.
To be elected makes for instant popularity. How that popularity is used directs the path of the iconic figure.
To be elected translates into a tremendous pride. Ride that pride with recklessness and you are bound for purgatory, if not hell.
Listen to Albert Camus: “Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those that have greatness within them do not go to politics.”
Great are the Boss that’s why they shun politics.
Trouble is, they know not how to use their greatness—mostly.
As the fellow above me, the great Jun Velasco, says in the title of his column, “Think about it.”
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