The Ideal Statesman in a Third World Setting

I wish all Third World leaders were like Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, who, in a little over a decade, managed to turn ethnic-torn Rwanda into a stable, prospering African country. (I still have vivid memories of those horrid photos of machete-wielding soldiers killing indiscriminately, dumping bodies into rivers that turned red with blood in a country torn by racial hatred. No less than 800,000 lives were lost in this ethnic strife between the Tutsis and the Hutus).

In Kagame is the embodiment of what Plato would call the meeting of philosophy and politics, of theory and practice, as that which leads to the best regime. Except that this philosopher-king did not learn his philosophy from books. His life was his philosophy. Having learned up close about the irrationalities and cruelties that human beings are capable of, he has employed his political power wisely when he became president, and has governed in the interest of all Rwandans.

This he has achieved by opening up his country to private foreign investments. In this WSJ interview, he offers important insights into his vision and governance that other leaders should emulate.

Sometimes all it takes for a poor, fledgling country to move forward is to be led by one good leader who gets it right, an elected "enlightened monarch," chosen by a people who, in the process, also become wise. A rarity indeed, an accident almost, except that it is already happening in Rwanda.

More on the Political Circus in Philippine Elections

This Wall Street Journal article, "Philippine Candidates Court a Televangelist," affirms exactly my point: everything that is wrong and can go wrong with the Philippine democratic process is self-inflicted.

Philippine Elections: Squandered Opportunities

In mid-January, I sent an e-mail note to a friend, a scholar of Philippine politics, expressing optimism about the upcoming Philippine presidential elections:

What a treat this will be indeed for Filipinos to have the opportunity to listen to intelligent discourse by presidential candidates about how best they can advance the welfare of the country; how to make the country catch up with the rest of Asia; how to harness the country's rich human capital, etc. I hope that by juxtaposing policy issues against personality traits, Filipino politicians can embark on a serious self-examination, take inventory of their talents and capacities, admit whether they are fit or unfit for governance, and, really start showing respect for Filipino voters whom for the longest time have been patronized as children and viewed as incapable of taking part in deliberative democracy.

Here's to an exciting election season!

Some election season indeed!

On the front page of today’s Washington Post is an article, “In Philippines, a campaign cameo by late dictator,” characterizing the Philippine elections as a political circus. Next to the article is a photo of the corpse of the former president, Ferdinand Marcos, being used by his widow, Imelda Marcos, as a political prop in her campaign for a congressional seat. One would think that age would have made her a little wiser, but when asked why so many members of the Marcos family are running for office (a son is running for a seat in the Philippine Senate seat while a daughter is running for provincial governor), she has this to say: “We can reinstate the vision of Ferdinand . . . This country can be great again.” Ferdinand Marcos was the country’s autocratic ruler who ruled the country with an iron fist for over 20 years, engaged in cronyism that led to the plunder of government resources, suspended the Filipino people’s rights and liberties, and plunged the country into serious economic debts.

Philippine national elections should be cause for national shame. Every Filipino should feel embarrassed about the country’s democratic process, old (corrupt) habits, and crippling political vices. The country’s inability to move forward is a self-inflicted wound. With the intellectual elite held hostage to a socialist agenda and the political elite by myopic self-interestedness, the Philippines lacks a strong and effective leadership – the kind that can take the country to where it deserves to be.

Still and all, there are a few enlightened Filipinos out there who, if given the chance, will give true meaning to statesmanship and public service. I just hope that the Filipinos will be intelligent enough to find them in the haystack that is the Philippine politics.

Is Karzai Trustworthy?

When Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, sensed that the tides were beginning to turn against him, he resorted to playing the “Ahmadinejad’s -no-to-foreign- occupiers” card against the US. The fact that he has found the ability to condemn the US and its allies as a “foreign presence” in his country goes to show that our problem with the Taliban has now expanded into the political realm: The hardest part of this war, paradoxically, isn't the fighting on the ground, which the U.S. military conducts brilliantly, but the struggle in the Afghan political sphere, where we know precious little, says David Ignatius of the Washington Post.

The mistake we made in Iraq, as in the Philippines a hundred years ago, as in Afghanistan, of transferring power to unready, unenlightened leaderships not habituated in the ways of self-rule will always doom the republican project. If we're more concerned about issues of national sovereignty over self-rule in places like Afghanistan, we will always leave behind a sovereign but a failed state. To succeed, Afghanistan will need leaders educated in the principles of republicanism, with insight into how to shape a local culture and a debilitating ideology into a new tradition that advances individual rights and liberties and the rule of law as the government’s core principles.

But that would be asking too much of a country torn by ethnic and religious strifes and which is ruled by corrupt leaders who rule in the interest of themselves. At best, we can only approximate that ideal by lending support to someone who has a good sense of what is right for his country. Karzai has just revealed his true color. He seems weak, gives in to Iranian pressure, and has yet to prove that he has the Afghans’ interest at heart. Here is a measure of a good Afghan leader: does he rule in the interest of his people or does he rule for himself? If Karzai knew what was best for his country, he would not have picked up a fight with the US.

Far from achieving the republican ideal, the seeming alternatives left for Afghanistan are: a) a return of the Taliban; b) an escalation of ethnic wars to the point where tribes cancel each other out; or c) finding a leader who has a good sense of what is right for his country and is willing to act on it.