Only Oca

AT least the governor-elect is sincere enough to admit his want of experience in governance and is willing to do something about it – enrolling himself in a three-year course at the Ateneo de Manila School of Government.
This augurs well for a career in government, most especially if Eddie T. Panlilio or his Third Force ever decides to transcend his self-announced three-year transition governance at the Capitol and totally cross over to the realm of politics.
(Three-year course within a three-year term, a slip may be showing there.)
There is no doubt that Panlilio will learn a lot from Ateneo, it arguably being the seat of intellectual aristocracy hereabouts. That elitist milieu though is not the best place for Panlilio to learn the ropes of governance, given the kind of people he will govern and the kind of governing they expect from him.
This is no advice, unsolicited or otherwise. This is a statement of a fact: Panlilio’s tabula rasa in governance can best be filled up, and in the shortest time at that, with mentoring by the honorable mayor of the City of San Fernando.
There is absolutely no way for anyone in the School of Government of Arneeow to surpass Oscar Samson Rodriguez in matters of local governance and public administration.
The slew of awards and recognition Oca and his city have been getting for the last three years makes a grand masteral diploma superior to anything and everything the “best schools” could ever offer. For these are solid testaments to actual accomplishments, not mere certificates of passing grades in untried theories and untested theses.
Fourth best mayor in all the world – besting even the hizzoners of San Francisco, California and Atlanta, Georgia in grand old US of A – is no mean feat, unparalleled in the whole of Asia yet. Other than Oca, can Panlilio get a better teacher?
So what can Panlilio learn from Oca?
Transparency, not only in official government transactions but even in his private person. Neither prism nor distorted mirror, Oca’s life is a looking glass through and true. All adornments be damned, Oca’s a real deal.
Sincerity – by simply saying what he means and meaning what he says – makes Oca the antithesis, the sore thumb to the Filipino politico. More than an epithet for disgust, ”kamatis” is Oca’s pet peeve.
Collegiality – empowering, not simply involving, all strata of local society in the conduct of the city affairs. Oca has institutionalized this very essence of democracy in a multi-sectoral governance council that counts among its members representatives of church groups, both Christian and Muslim; business and labor, the academe, jeepney drivers and market traders, poets and journalists, doctors and farmers.
Political will – for the welfare of the people, no matter the cost. Something akin to Admiral Farragut’s immortal words, “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead” found manifest in Oca’s determined bid to build more schools, Rey Aquino’s “legal” ululations be damned.
An unsolicited advice to the governor now: Read Oca to understand him.
“Rare is he who has struggled through life firmly fixed on a single ideological vision.
Oscar Samson Rodriguez is that rarity.
His is a story that makes a compelling study of the merging of individual life with the unraveling process of history.
His is a story that bears witness to the continuing relevance of an ideology – call it an article of faith, if you will – in the most uncertain times, in the ever-changing climes in this benighted republic.”
So goes the foreword of my proto-biography About Oca: A Story of Struggle.
Read the living Oca, more than his biography. Then go beyond reading, beyond understanding him and learn. Go into a conscientization process to internalize Oca, by living his article of faith – his ”sandigan ng aking pananalig at saligan ng aking paninindigan” that is Magsilbi Tamu.
No, they can’t teach that in Ateneo. As only Oca is, so only Oca can.