[One of my old blogs from Multiply.com, unedited.]

    For the Filipino people, a traditional politician is corrupt. For them politics is a business. It indeed has become a sort of money-making arena. However, why should we settle with these definitions when there is a more preferable one.

    For me a traditional politician is a human being who’s made by God in His own likeness and image. This man is God-fearing and he has been tasked  to look after all God’s creations especially his own kind.  So when a man runs for politics and aspires to become a leader, he is not elected to become a god but only a man who’s given a great responsibility over the others. He would stay the same. He could even walk the same streets he used to pass by because he’s no better than the others. He’s even become a lower person because he is now the servant of the people.

    Today politicians and leaders are given privileges; too much that they don’t even deserve them. Take them away and we’ll know who are the real leaders ready to serve and die for their people.

    The pork barrel has always been an issue. Why? Because it’s like water that flows anywhere that has space. It has become uncontrollable. It fills containers that should not be filled. The pork barrel is not to build mansions for mistresses and secret husbands, rather it is to build communities. The pork barrel is not to buy luxury cars, rather to provide transportation to schools and to workplaces. The pork barrel is not only for a person but for a people.

    Sometimes knowledge is not what’s important. Adam and Eve acquired knowledge when they ate the forbidden fruit and they were thrown out of paradise. Former President F. Marcos was intelligent but he brought sufferings to the Filipino people. And Mrs. G. Arroyo is intelligent too but is she better?  These and a lot more prove that not only knowledge could make my traditional politician because for me he must have a heart.

    What makes real priests serve God whose existence is even questioned? They have a heart who loves and pure devotion in serving God’s people. Then why can’t the Filipino nation’s traditional politicians have this heart and this devotion when the people they must serve even have unquestionable existence? Maybe we should make our leaders take the vow of poverty so that they would not be blinded by wealth.
   
    My traditional politician is indeed very ideal. Reality has long erased this idealism from every Filipino who’s gone tired of painful sufferings. However reviving this idealism would not harm rather it might even serve as an eye-opener to each of us.

    We set our norms. Therefore we can change them. Who says a traditional politician is corrupt? I say no! You may say it, too.