I
spent almost my whole life in Naga City. Though I was born in Polangui, Albay,
I grew up in the Maogmang Lugar which I humbly call as my happy place.
Basically, I became conscious and got in touch with reality in Naga. I
developed my skills, forged and started relationships, earned life experiences
in Naga. Also, the me I am today is the product of my stay in Naga during my
developmental years from childhood to adolescence. My happy place is infamous
for its Participatory Governance which was started by the late Secretary of
Interior and Local Government and my personal idol and inspiration, Sec. Jesse
Robredo. It is his leadership style, which is now fondly called as “tsinelas
leadership” which I would want to emulate ever since. From my limited
comprehension of his leadership style as well as observation during his term as
mayor, I guess his “tsinelas leadership” means getting in touch with the people
you serve, with the members of your organization and most especially, you walk
your talk. Aside from that, tsinelas Leadership for me entails that as a
leader, you walk among your people, you guide them but you don’t dictate to
them the things that they should do.
On
the other hand, since my first year in college, I was bombarded with the
different knowledge and skills expected to a social worker. Aside from that,
every now and then, professors would remind us that we have to have the
attitude also that social workers are expected to have. I am proud to say that
somehow, I learned and I managed to remember some things worth remembering.
Among those things is the Principle of Self-Determination. The Principle of Self-Determination
is one of the many principles that social workers are expected to adhere. In
this principle, social workers are expected to respect the person’s capacity to
decide for what is better for himself or to his group. Also, social workers are
expected not to dictate or influence the decision-making process of individual
unless otherwise the decision of the person is perceived as something that will inflict harm to himself
or to other people around him.
Tsinelas
leadership and the Principle of Self-Determination - two different concepts
with different origin, one from the public administration perspective while the
other from the social work perspective yet they bear the same message: giving
the people a chance to raise their voice and determine what is good for them.
Throughout my imperfect “career” as a student leader in college (especially
when I was the HWA President) and even in high school, the two concepts I
mentioned are my top two tenets. The tsinelas leadership which implies
simplicity, getting in touch with the member of my organization and walking my
talk and the Principle of Self-Determination which gives the members of the
organization to opportunity to identify, decide and implement things that they think will be
beneficial to the majority of the members. When I was the president of HWA, my
battlecry is to empower the members of the organization by reminding them that
they are the organization and to involve as many students as possible in the
different processes of the organization in such a way to remove the notion that
the organization is equal to the officers. Aside from that, some of the
important decisions of the organizations were also opened to debate and
discussion before finally leaving things to voting. For example, from imposing
a theme selected by the officers for a specific event, students were asked to
nominate their desired theme, present the idea and most importantly to vote for
the theme that they think is the best and beneficial. Good thing that the my fellow officers in the organization shares the same battlecry that I have wherein at
the end of our term, we can say that things (though not perfect) have somehow
changed such as students’ passivity was transformed to pro-activeness and some
became more assertive with regards to their ideas. We tried to
institutionalized things by changing the organizational structure of the
organization which placed to the top the General Assembly as the highest policy
making body of the organizations to make sure that the members (collectively)
will still be powerful than the officers and officers will be accountable to the members of the organization and that the decision of the assembly
will most of the time (if not always) will be followed or prioritized. My perception then was that we were able to start what
I called as “WEvolution” where students became more involved, more empowered and
happier of their status as members but I guess that was only a perception – my
perception.
Sadly,
things changed and some are continuously changing. I guess I have to remind
myself that change is the only constant thing in the world. But what is sadder
is that the gains that we have a year ago was slowly being erased and that we
are slowly sliding back to where we begin. The existence of the organization
and the purposes for which it was established is not anymore being respected. Today,
all decisions regarding the organization, crucial or not so crucial, fall into
the hands of the omnipotent beings in the department who can simply overturn
the decisions of the General Assembly for whatever reason or reasons (mostly
subjective, baseless and biased) without lifting a finger. The guidance and
supervisory function of the faculty was elevated to decision-making while the
members of the organization have no choice but to accept the decision of the
faculty regardless of its fairness to the members. The fate of the organization
is now rested upon what the faculty dictates which destroys the concept of
STUDENT organization. I am not questioning the capability of the faculty to
decide for the organization dahil
naniniwala naman ako na walang magulang ang gugustuhing mapasama ang kanyang
mga anak. But at the end of the day, it is the students who lost their
chance to develop better decision-making skills, better assertiveness and
better identity as an essential part of the organization and of the department. It is the students
who lost their chance to enjoy the privilege that the principle of self-determination
offers and it is the students who lost their chance to be heard.
Gone
are the days when the organization can determine the concept of the activities
that it wants to implement freely. Gone are the days when members of the
organization could vote, suggest and comment on what they want freely. Gone are
the days of empowered students. Gone are the days of students’
self-determination. Gone are the days of the Human Welfare Advocates that was
established for the students, by the students and of the students. Gone are the
days that the Human Welfare Advocates can be branded as a student organization.
Self-determination and Participative Governance in the Human Welfare Advocates
died and along with it, the very essence and the very reason of existence of
the Human Welfare Advocates died. Until the important people in and out of the
organization will not redefine their roles in the organization, nothing will
change and the Human Welfare Advocates will forever be dead.
