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I HAVE been always critical of PNoy’s performance as shown in my previous articles and so I was one of the thousands if not, millions who were too eager to listen to his final “Sona” on Monday. I listened. And I was more than satisfied.

If there was one thing that PNoy set for his successor, it’s to put people first in all decisions that a president has to make. He may not have been perfect as he admitted it, but he did the best that he could have done on any given situation he was in.

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What I like about his last Sona was that he did not only present very good statistics, he also shared concrete stories of real lives that were changed by every landmark program he has embarked in his term. Numbers don’t lie, and more importantly those numbers are people and lives.

He perfectly set the dawning of a rising country. And now that he is about to pass the baton in a year’s time, we could only hope that the next in line would at least share his commitment to good governance.

His Sona was nothing less than a heed for all public servants, both elected and otherwise, that it is the best time to be selfless. It is time to sacrifice personal interests and put the people’s welfare first. To make programs not based on politics but on the pressing need. And for most politicians, that may just be the most difficult thing to do.
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This brings me to the garbage issue in Cagayan de Oro between Fr. Roberto Yap and Vice Mayor Caesar Ian Acenas. Obviously, it is politics at play. I was hoping that an entry of a third party, and a clergy at that, would pave a way to a new mindset in public service where our local politicians can learn from but sadly it ended up in a tug-of-war, and showing off of powers. Nothing less than arrogance at play.

While I am 100 percent with Fr. Yap on this issue, Councilor Leon Gan hit the bull’s eye to label the people’s rally on Monday as “premature, adding that the civil society group members should first seek an audience with the city council before they resort to such, otherwise, they [would be] misled or used for [partisan] politics.”

Yes, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma was right to say that the issue on garbage is beyond politics, quite a rebuttal to my previous statement that it would be almost impossible for the vice mayor to see the issue beyond their political game. But to bloat the issue as good versus evil, or the church versus traditional politics, without exploring other means first is in a way disrespecting the very system they decided to engaged themselves in. In a way as well, that made them no better than the city council. Perhaps this is where the “separation of the church and state” find logic.

I have hinted on my previous article on how Yap can rally this cause by playing the game of politics. And he did, but not the way I was hoping he would. He played the game using the “church” card. He played not as underdog but an alpha. Very savvy. I just don’t think it was the best card to carry out his “garbage” agenda.

One of my modules in leadership is to teach leaders how to arrive at a win-win situations. It is not always necessary to defeat an opponent to win the game. The city council is not perfect, and in this case they are narrow-mindedly selfish. But they are not evil people. And if our interest is simply to solve the garbage problem in the city, then we do not have to paint them as such. We simply recruit them as buy-ins. Now, for me, that’s playing beyond politics.

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