The quality of living is a reflection of Filipino preferences for leadership. Oftentimes, it has been a practice that Filipinos have preferred the leaders they want more than they need, which led to their pitfall.
As this trend continues and as poverty hunts the marginalized sector, Filipinos turn ‘bright eyes and ears’ to religion and charismatic leaders. This even makes scholars turn an eye back to the precolonial Filipino leadership. For academics, ‘pamathalaan’ implies ‘kasama ni Bathala’ as an approach to redefine Filipino leadership and to reinforce unity based on ‘native Filipino philosophy’ and leadership practices.
Meanwhile, ‘pamathalaan’ as a systemic philosophy that is based on unity and nurtured by love of God, country, and fellow human citizens as well as respect for nature, serves as the core value of democracy and citizenship. Today’s ‘ministros’ or ‘supreme head’ are possibly reinforcers of ‘indigenous principle.’ Through the ideas of ‘pamathalaan,’ leaders are called to become ethical models by living with moral laws and respecting diversity and ethnicity.
Generally, any leaders today could now interchangeably be termed as charismatic leaders in a way that they are ‘charismatic, persevering, eloquent, persuasive in speech, approachable, sociable, and much more authoritarian but paternalistic’ to the extent that they are more personal to their members/followers.
The ‘Bagong Baylan’ leadership is totally a unique Filipino way of leadership, for this is culturally rooted in once-unadulterated precolonial Philippines. It must be emphasized that it was never a battle of ideologies, an issue of spiritual or secular dominance but of social welfare through public service.
‘Baylan’ leadership does not imply amalgamation of the Church and State but mere ‘cooperative church-state relations’ or cultural and bureaucratic harmony, especially since the two share common values of social justice, equity, and nationalism.
To restore the precolonial Filipino leadership, Filipinos should learn to examine their leaders when it comes to the following standards: enthusiasm to promote ‘national interest,’ priority of ‘public welfare,’ possession of ‘unquestionable integrity,’ commitment to fulfill the public task and ‘communicate with people’ through the common language that reflects people’s will.
In the end, it is now not a surprise to see a transformed ‘Baylan’ either seated in an elective position or in a delegate position, uniting and directing people to work for the achievement of a common set of goals and objectives.