“I’m fighting for the truth,” he said, and the other countered: “We’re all fighting for the truth.”

A meaningful tension of viewpoints hummed throughout the discourse that followed guest speaker Alex Lacson’s talk, titled “Patriotism and a Silent National Crisis,” during the Rotary Club of Manila Bay’s (RCMB) second membership meeting held last Aug. 15 in Makati City.

It was a display of differences in experience with expertise across various fields. Former university presidents and undersecretaries, technology officers, and members of the press, among others, propounded their own insights on some of the country’s major issues, which ranged from political dynasties to learning modules to the transmission of votes during the last major election.

Although the tail end of the Q&A segment turned into somewhat of a debate, an understanding between Lacson and Manila Bay Rotarians was made clear: that they are all stakeholders prepared to help ease these problems in their own ways. How exactly to go about it was where the contention sprang.

Not a politician

Before his speech, Alex Lacson sat unassumingly over a glass of water and his paper bag of books at a table he shared with a handful of press people. He is himself a Rotarian, from the Pasig club, and although known for running under the campaigns of the late former president Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III and, most recently, former vice president Leni Robredo, he said of himself: “I am not a politician.”

The conversation with press people was casual but idea-juggling. “I have always been a hesitant politician, even during P-Noy’s time,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.  

He reminisced about his campaign period with VP Leni. “That campaign was beautiful. You just wanted to fight for the cause,” he said. “We would go there, and the people would shoulder everything. They would even give us baon—packed food—after.”

Lacson introduced himself—and was introduced by Rotarian president Rogie Tangco—as an author, lawyer, and advocate. His first book, “12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do to Help Our Country,” was published in 2005, spurring a writing career from nonfiction to poetry— all centered on love of country.

In fact, his work on patriotism was what made him ideal as speaker on the topic for this particular Rotary Club meeting that focused on the concept itself. Patriotism had guided his decision to join the Pasig Rotary Club in 2007: In his talk, he said “many of the most patriotic and generous Filipinos I know are members.”

“[Rotary Club] is one of the best organizations one could easily rely on during typhoons, floodings, earthquakes and epidemics,” he said. “I saw this myself during the last pandemic… Genuine patriotism may be lacking among many of our leaders and politicians, but it is not lacking in Rotary.”

The silent crisis

Lacson referenced two books in his talk: Daniel Tudor’s “Korea: The Impossible Country,” which tells of South Korea’s rapid development during the time of Park Chung-hee after its liberation from Japanese occupation, and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s “Why Nations Fail,” which discusses the causal connection between a nation’s institutions and its growth and development, based primarily on the authors’ yearslong economic research on the governments and histories of hundreds of countries.

He raised a question that returned to the national scene: How is it that a majority of corrupt politicians were educated in some of the most prestigious and top universities in the country?

This question propelled him further toward what he sees as one of the most fundamental national problems of our time—the silent crisis of education in the Philippines—citing widely reported data of poor performance by 10-year-old Filipino students in the Programme for International Student Assessment, findings that in turn buttressed the 2022 World Bank’s own report on learning poverty experienced by Filipino children.

“The learning deficiency problem has become so big that, in my opinion, the government cannot solve it on its own anymore,” Lacson said. “The solution needs the active participation of its citizens, including Rotarians like us.”

Currently, he is deeply involved with the Gabay Aral literacy program founded by YMCA Makati, where he sits as a board member. The program was initiated a few months after the release of the World Bank report on learning poverty.

In answer to a question posed by CoverStory on the interconnected problems of poverty, corruption, and education, Lacson cited the problems in education as the most remediable of the three at the grassroots level.

“Poverty and corruption are their own problems, although they are all connected,” he said. “This learning poverty is really a specific problem. We cannot solve the problem of poverty [as ordinary people]. We try our best to help, but it’s difficult to address the problem [individually, and it’s the same with] corruption… But helping a child to read and write is something that we can do. It’s really a bite-sized solution [to] so many overwhelming problems in our country.”

Lacson told the story of nine-year-old Joana, who used to sell sampaguita leis with her siblings in front of the National Shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in San Antonio Village, Makati. After participating in the Gabay Aral program, Joana became proficient in English, “as though she were a student in a top private school.”

“And suddenly, she started dreaming: She wanted to become a doctor,” he recounted. “So our challenge right now is, how can we help her achieve her dream of becoming a doctor?”

Differences in perspective

The condition of ordinary Filipinos is manifestly where Lacson roots his frame of mind. His rhetoric, whether in his speech or in answering questions, was resolute and impassioned, but delivered still in a controlled voice.

Where he looks at solutions committed directly through grassroots/community-level programs, the Rotarians, industry leaders knowledgeable in the technical and systematic side within their fields of domain, made pertinent comments, such as on how the Gabay Aral program model could be scaled on a macro level instead of simply being executed in small clusters of certain cities.

Rotarian Anna Yu, who herself works with the Makati City government in matters related to public school services, found it strange that Gabay Aral was initiated at all, given that the city itself “allots a lot of money to ensure that students in the public schools have everything,” so that they do not have to worry about anything except simply going to school.

“I couldn’t understand what was being done in Gabay Aral that we aren’t already doing [in Makati public schools],” she remarked to Lacson. “And we wanted to know what else we can do, because maybe we would be able to do it so that it’s the government that actually helps.”

Yu continued: “We wanted to see where we can help in terms of the social net, that we can catch what you should not have to be doing, given that we have too much [government] resources [allotted for that].”

Lacson welcomed help from the city government to streamline the program, and shared a finding regarding the Makati high school modules, which, he said, were “too compact and complicated” and lacked the repetition necessary for students to efficiently retain knowledge in class.

“We couldn’t follow the modules,” he said. “So if we couldn’t understand it, then the children would not be able to understand it… We had to simplify them.”

“I hope you can relay our learnings [from the program],” he told Anna Yu. “so that, at least in Makati, you can address that problem.”

Vote-counting technology

More discussions ensued on topics other than education, such as the vote-counting technology in the 2022 election. Lacson was particularly strenuous on what he found to be spurious mechanics in the computation of the ballots and election returns, while Rotarian William Emmanuel Yu, a chief technology officer, explained his own understanding of the matter based on his involvement as technical advisor to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) at the time.

“We spoke to [Eliseo] Rio, we spoke to the team,” William Yu said, referring to the former information and communications technology secretary who has raised purported irregularities in the last presidential election. “We got all the data, we looked at it. And we are not [the] Comelec.”

“Precisely,” Lacson said. “Whether you spoke to [Rio] or not, you’re not supposed to protect the institution. You’re supposed to protect the integrity of the votes of the people… I’m willing to fight for this. We really need to fight for the truth… I’m fighting for the truth.”

Rotarian Bobby Galvez retorted: “We’re all fighting for the truth.” 

The session ended after Galvez proposed that the RCMB board meet and discuss whether a budget could be allocated for the Gabay Aral program, to which president Tangco responded simply: “Consider it done. Let’s have some peace and quiet, and fellowship after this.”

Personal power vs common good

There is little to say in terms of values in today’s popular politics. As much as nuance and contextualization are assigned when reporting on government affairs, the known pageantry and self-interest in political maneuvers have long made nuance-making almost tedious. If only these maneuvers do not critically influence the welfare and hardships of ordinary Filipinos!

But nuance lends itself well on ground level. At least in this Rotary Club meeting, a distinction was made between those who actually work for the common good and those who work simply for personal power or gain, as underlined in the lively discourse between Alex Lacson and RCMB members.

Intentions toward personal power and toward common good resemble one another, so that one is often mistaken for the other. Identifying which is which is made trickier with the celebrity and brand culture bleeding into public service. 

In his talk, Lacson took these two intentions, separated them, and homed in simply on loyalty to the nation and action for the people. His Rotarian audience engaged him with their own cognition and imagination on how to apply and optimize this loyalty in the field.

For the most part, even with the animated disputation that occurred, the event was both familiar and hospitable, in the style of a friendly dinner. Those present at the packed meeting conveyed good friendship, asking about one another’s families, ordering drinks and dinner, and laughing together in the true spirit of “fellowship”—a fundamental Rotarian value.

It was a balanced interaction marked by a useful diversity of perceptions, so that, in the end, the tension was actually instructive before the meeting was adjourned for fellowship among the participants, including Lacson.

It makes one wonder if this level of healthy discourse could ever be brought back in the national government—a state of affairs in which the opposition is an equal, and not simply a minority or “enemy” party to be undermined, during discussions related to public interest.

Read more: Being ‘Filipino’