Growing leaders for the republic

For years, we have lamented the shortage of ethical and competent leadership in Philippine national life. We ask where the next Ramon Magsaysay, Jesse Robredo, Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, or Noynoy Aquino will come from. We complain about political dynasties, celebrity politics, patronage, and the apparent randomness with which exceptional leaders occasionally emerge.

Perhaps we have been asking the wrong question. The Philippines does not necessarily lack leadership nurseries. It has many of them. What we lack is a way of connecting the nurseries.

Consider the remarkable landscape already before us. The Department of Science and Technology–Science Education Institute’s (DOST-SEI) Scholars Leadership Camp (SLC) began in 2017 as the Patriot Scholars Formation Program. For nearly a decade, it has brought selected DOST scholars from the country’s 17 regions into a common formation experience emphasizing professional excellence, social responsibility, and servant leadership. It is not merely a camp. It is a longitudinal national network of young Filipinos selected for demonstrated scientific and academic potential and then exposed to the larger question of what they owe their country.

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Other nurseries are already flourishing. The Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) has Bagani, its emerging program for young public-service leaders, alongside the Public Management Development Program for government executives. The Local Government Academy develops newly elected officials. University of the Philippines–National College of Public Administration and Governance’s LEAD4R brings together leaders from government, civil society, business, and communities. The Jesse M. Robredo Foundation’s (JMRF) Young Leaders for Good Governance and Lego programs cultivate local political and governance leadership.

The private and civic sectors have their own remarkable efforts. Ayala Foundation’s Young Leaders program and Leadership Communities have cultivated generations of young Filipinos. Teach for the Philippines selects, trains, deploys, and mentors young people through demanding assignments in public schools. YouthLed has developed democratic and civic leaders. Universities, professional associations, nongovernment organizations, and social enterprises are running their own leadership initiatives.

Even political parties have youth organizations and political education programs. The raw material is therefore abundant. What is missing is the architecture.

A young Filipino may graduate from an excellent leadership program and then return to ordinary professional life. Another may emerge from an outstanding local government fellowship. A third may be a community organizer, scientist, entrepreneur, or civil society leader with extraordinary potential. Yet there is often no bridge connecting one achievement to the next level of responsibility. We have islands of excellence. We need an archipelago of leadership.

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The SLC offers an especially promising spine for such a system because it is simultaneously longitudinal, national, and regional. It reaches young people before they have entered established professional hierarchies. It brings together talent from all 17 regions. Its alumni can become the connective tissue between otherwise separate leadership communities.

Imagine what could happen if SLC alumni could move, according to their interests and demonstrated capacities, into Bagani, LEAD4R, Teach for the Philippines, JMRF, DAP, local government programs, professional fellowships, civil society initiatives, or appropriate political leadership programs. The essential innovation would not be another academy. It would be a Philippine Leadership Commons.

Participating programs would retain their independence but agree to connect their alumni, share leadership competencies, exchange mentors, identify promising participants, and create progressive opportunities for responsibility. A common “Leadership Passport” could document not certificates alone, but demonstrated accomplishments: projects undertaken, communities served, problems solved, ethical challenges faced, mentors, peer assessments, and measurable results.

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The critical word is challenge. Leadership should not be manufactured through seminars. It must be tested through consequential experience. Give promising Filipinos real problems—flooding, education, housing, livelihoods, digital misinformation, climate adaptation, community conflict—and let us see what they do when responsibility becomes real.

The goal is not to manufacture presidents. It is to create a country in which thousands of capable and ethical Filipinos are continuously prepared for greater responsibility—in government, business, science, civil society, and politics.

This brings us to the macapuno. Filipino science learned how to rescue and propagate a desirable coconut variety that nature produced only sporadically. We did not invent the desirable trait. We created an environment in which it could survive and multiply.

Perhaps that is precisely what we need to do with Filipino leadership. The good leaders are already emerging. The nurseries already exist. What is now required is to connect them—so that leadership no longer appears as a lucky aberration of political nature, but becomes a deliberately cultivated national resource.

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doyromero@gmail.com