Missing Jesse

In this depressing season of irrational pre-election politicking, I am missing Jesse Robredo and his quiet, no-nonsense, ego-free and empowering approach to leadership. Jesse was an uncommon politician, a servant-leader, a simple straightforward man unimpressed with power.

I first met Jesse in 1998, when we were both members of Galing Pook Foundation that does an annual search for the most outstanding projects and programs of local governments in the country. He had been a three-time mayor of Naga and was sitting out a three-year term before he could run again to continue the work that he had begun in his home town. We were discussing criteria on good governance when I realized that, being so Manila-centered, was oblivious to what this friendly giant of a man had accomplished in Naga, even as internationally, he was already a poster boy for good governance. I was blown away. I had no idea that this simple, ordinary man had succeeded in revolutionizing local governance in his city and energizing the local community.

One day, President Cory Aquino, who I worked for in the Aquino Foundation, asked me if I knew Jesse Robredo and what I thought of him. As I gushed, she asked me to ask him when he would be in Manila so she could invite him to lunch.  Over the phone, on hearing that the former president wanted to see him, Jesse answered, “I will be there tomorrow.”

It was a one-on-one meeting at the board room of the Cojuangco building in Makati. But I was privileged to sit in and listen to the two icons of democracy talk shop about leadership, good governance, and the empowerment of the people of Naga City.

I met with Jesse in Naga in 2008 when I was sent by the World Bank to write about development projects it had helped fund. I saw a lot of Naga in the three days I was there visiting community-managed projects and touring new infrastructure: the new Central Business District and bus depot outside the town center that decongested the city proper, housing projects for the poor by Gawad Kalinga and Habitat for Humanity, and new roads that led to new settlements. In an impressive demonstration of transparency and accountability, on display at City Hall were reports on the status of city projects, use of funds, and other data that citizens are entitled to know.

The high point of that trip was a meeting with the man who made all this possible, Mayor Jesse Robredo. We met at his office in City Hall, a glass encased room where everyone could see what he was doing inside. 

Mayor Robredo was busy but he made time for a quick interview over lunch. As we ate, it began to rain really hard and people brought in plastic pails to catch the rainwater that was pouring profusely from the ceiling.  Jesse glanced at the scene, shrugged his shoulders and said that the city had other priorities.

As I left his office, Jesse mentioned he was going to catch a bus to Lucena early the following morning to attend a meeting. And because I asked, he said he was going alone. It was a short trip, he would just sleep on the way, no one would bother him, he said.  At that moment, I whispered a prayer for the safety of this man who was so needed by his city but who was totally unimpressed with his own importance.

I saw Jesse again as he was finishing his last term as mayor of Naga.  What’s next? I asked him. Would he run for governor of his province?  He couldn’t, he said, because he was not a registered voter in Camarines Sur. Naga is a chartered city that does not belong to the province. When I urged him to run for president instead, he grinned and dismissed the idea. How would his detractors, who had filed protests against his mayoral candidacies claiming he was a Chinese citizen, react to that?

In 2012, two years into his service as President Noynoy Aquino‘s Secretary of Interior and Local Government, Jesse began to look like presidential material.  Never mind that the President seemed to think twice before appointing him, and that the Commission on Appointments refused to confirm his appointment. The nation finally saw what Naga had been gifted with all along.  Jesse’s uncommon touch, his refreshing ordinariness, his no-nonsense approach to his job, his insistence on transparency and accountability, reminded Filipinos of another loved and admired former president, the late Ramon Magsaysay.

Jesse was my only candidate to succeed PNoy in 2016. I imagined an uninterrupted 12-year period of good governance and progress, just what the country needed to get out of the doldrums after the disastrous Estrada and Arroyo regimes.

Then, on Aug. 18, 2012, came the news that the light plane Jesse was in had fallen into the sea off Masbate. The nation was in tenterhooks, hoping Jesse, who was able-bodied, was able to get out of the plane and swim to a nearby town where he would be found, safe and sound. But as the days wore on, it became clear that, like Ramon Magsaysay, we had lost another populist servant-leader in a plane crash.

It’s been two years since Jesse left us. To me, he is still the best president we will never have. May whoever aspires to lead this country in 2016 strive to emulate his simplicity, honesty and sense of responsibility. And may he or she institutionalize, as Jesse did in Naga, the transparency and accountability that we deserve from our leaders.