By Ana de Villa – Singson
I have been a PPCRV volunteer for over 33 years. PPCRV is the Parish Pastoral Council tasked with Voters Education, Pollwatching and Conducting the Unofficial Parallel Count. I am also the National Voters Education Head. Recently, we launched Tibok Pinoy, a values formation program comprising of 6 books and 11 podcasts. The prayer is to bring values, so much needed and very much lost, back to schools. At the launch held on September 10 at the Dusit Thani Hotel, I gave the speech which launched Tibok Pinoy. The entirety of the speech is posted below.
While most of you know us as pollwatchers guarding the vote, you see us on Election Day in our white t-shirts with the Holy Spirit emblazoned on it as our logo, we do more than guard the vote. We also undertake Voters Education. In 2010, With the onset of automation, we taught voters the process of using vote counting machines. We taught from the parish centers, sometimes we taught even from the pulpits, we educated in roros, public markets, malls, even in buses and domestic planes. We even went house to house, caravan style. We won an ANVIL award for our creative voters education program then and went to Malacanang for another award.
But while we make much of the machines, what matters most is the people. It is people who create and configure a machine’s protocols. It is people who cast the votes that are fed into the machines. It is the people who decide the leadership and destiny of our country.
This is the voter’s education that matters the most, that kind that teaches you how to vote according to your conscience and how to choose worthy candidates. But after 33 years of voters education, we in PPCRV took time to pause and re-examine. Have we been successful in educating voters? If we have, then why are Vote Buying and Vote Selling now raging at a wholesale level where even whole families and whole barangays can be bought? Where in one night alone, while waiting for his Bishop, one of our coordinators was plied with PHp 11000 in a matter of 3 hours peddled by various vote buyers? Our most popular voters education material, PPCRV’s 10 Commandments for Voting, has been adapted many times over, even imported to Indonesia, but can we really say we have been successful when many Filipinos choose candidates on the basis of name familiarity alone, without due diligence on a candidate’s character, capabilities and experience?
VOTER’S EDUCATION. The name itself is a misnomer. We gather to vote every 3 years. Is it true and effective education then if we teach only every 3 years during election periods.
VOTER. Do we truly want to educate a voter only for the singular act of voting once every 3 years? Is that enough? Or should we educate him to be the best that he can possibly be ? Should we teach him to be just a good voter or should we aim higher and teach him to be a model Filipino citizen so that his heart beats, throbs, pulses PINOY all the time, anytime, anywhere and everywhere.
TIBOK PINOY. It is PPCRV’s Voters Education…recharged. We aim to educate and hone MODEL FILIPINOS, not just good voters, but model Filipinos . But who is a model Filipino? What charactersistics must he have to be a model Filipino?
PPCRV conducted a nationwide survey to determine the key characteristics of a model Filipino. The first and by far the leading characteristic is one that warms the heart. It is of being MAKA-DIYOS. A model Filipino must be God-loving and God-fearing. Next, he must be MATAPAT. MAGALANG, MASIPAG, MATULUNGIN, MAKABAYAN.
MAKA-DIYOS. While making the podcasts on being Maka-Diyos, I met Samira Gutoc. Sam is a force of nature. She was part of ARMM’s legislative body, a one time peace panelist, an environmentalist who has been adjudged by a Jordanian organization as one of the Top 500 Most Influential Muslims in the world. She said something that struck me. The Muslim greeting of SALAM means peace and it is very close to the Jewish Shalom which also means peace. They share the same words and yet are mortal enemies. Catholics and Muslims both believe in Angel Gabriel, in Jesus who is a disciple to them, their Ramadan is actually in emulation of Jesus’ 30 days in the desert. And yet despite having so much in common, our religions and cultures are engaged in a protracted war in the South. Are we truly Maka-Diyos if we cannot rise above our differences to discover that we have so much more in common than we have differences?
MATAPAT. When no one is watching, when the mettle of a man’s honesty matters the most, when there are no witnesses, are we MATAPAT? In our book and podcast of MATAPAT you will meet RONALD GADALAN. He is a janitor at NAIA 2. He has been working there for 14 years and to this day he is not a permanent employee. One day, while cleaning in the departure lounge, he found a Louis Vuitton bag. Inside it was cash and jewelry worth Php 2.5 Million Pesos. No one was watching. There was no CCTV in that area. And Roland, with tuition fees for his sons in college, what did he do? He returned the Louis Vuitton bag to the lost and found and the bag was returned to its grateful owner. When we are alone, when no one can witness nor catch us, will we choose the harder route and do a Ronald Gadayan or do we give in to temptation and to need? MATAPAT, are we honest when we are alone with our conscience?
MAGALANG. Respect is the very foundation of societal interaction. In a country with 7 000 islands , so many dialects and different religious persuasions, do we show respect when we are faced with others who have opposing points of view. Our book teaches one to listen not to debate but to listen to understand and try to find common ground. Do we listen to others or do we shut them down by shouting “Recess, Recess” as a lawmaker recently did when his young Sangguniang Kabataan representative was questioning his choices. Are we Magalang?
MASIPAG. We meet several inspiring people in this book. One of them is Lito Tayag, a farmer’s son who would till the land with his father at 4 in the morning. Through sheer hard work, Lito rose to become the former President of Accenture. His is a Cinderella story that inspires and shines the light on the discipline, the hard work, the toil that goes into fulfilling one’s dream. You will also meet Mon Fernandez, not the basketball player but our very own VP for External Affairs, who, when he is not being a PPCV volunteer is the President of Maynilad. He reached that through hard work and shares his secrets for reaching his Northern Star.
MATULUNGIN. Being helpful in not just about helping others. Have you learned to help yourself? We ask this in the first section of our book? Because how can you help others without first ensuring that you are well? In this world of multiple deadlines, where 24/7 is not enough, where gratification is required to be instantaneous, we teach you to STOP. BREATHE. FIND EQUILIBRIUM. FIND YOURSELF AND ENSURE MENTAL WELLNESS. We teach you to be kind not just to others but to be kind to yourself too. Because it all begins with you and if you are fully well then you are energized to be good, do good for everyone else around you.
MAKABAYAN…there is a word that shines in it. MAKA – BAYAN, MAKA-BAYANI. A person who is Makabayan is a bayani. In a recent forum, I asked attendees who they thought of as MAKABAYAN. Most of them answered Jose Rizal. Well and good. He gave life and limb for country. But heroes need not be dead or in history books that we can only read about and admire from afar. We need heroes who live, breathe, and give inspiration through their example. Look at the person beside you. Is there something heroic about him? Because I certainly think that there is a bayani in everyone. I firmly believe that the Filipino heart is a good one. I see it in our PPCRV volunteers We have a 90 year old volunteer who was wheeled as a poll watcher not in a wheelchair but in a hospital bed. She would toil under the burning sun during elections. When she was told to rest by other worried volunteers she said “ I have been a voluteer for more than 30 years. I will die a volunteer.” We have volunteers who ride the bancas to remote islands to accompany the vote counting machines and ballot boxes to make sure they are not tampered with. They brave the waves and temperamental weather. Is that not heroic? We need real life stories, real life heroes to look up to so that we too can become heroes. There is a hero in each one of us. Look around, find it, grasp it. Live it!
These 6 books and 11 podcasts are replete with real life stories, with examples, with methodologies and self-improvement guidelines. They have exercises which provoke thought and test our understanding. They give solid examples of how to act like a model Filipino. They are written and also illustrated, some in comics to show an alternative literary genre and also to lighten the way very deep messages and learnings are shared.
While our 6 books and 11 podcasts are meant for general distribution, they are especially made for our high school youth. We believe in teaching them now so that they can reap the benefits of formation throughout their lives. We believe in bringing values back to schools and to youth organizations because their lives are like tabula rasa…their stories have yet to be written so let’s teach them to write the stories that are God-fearing, God-loving, Honest, Respectful, Helpful, Nationalistic and Discerning.
Our 6 Tibok Pinoy Books and Podcasts and even a tutorial on how to use them are available on our website: https://ppcrv.org/. Like everything we do in PPCRV, we offer them up without expectation of anything. We offer them to you as a gift. We offer TIBOK PINOY as a prayer that our country divided by conflict, ridden by corruption will pivot back to what counts the most…the values of a model FILIPINO. MAKA-DIYOS, MATAPAT. MAGALANG. MASIPAG. MATULUNGIN. MAKABAYAN. MAPANURI. We offer you the tools and offer them to you our partners, our friends, because we know that it takes a village…a very large village to make our dream of a country peopled by MODEL FILIPINOS happen. We need all of you our partners in the Church. We need our friends in the corporate world , our venerable teachers in the academe, our passionate youth leaders, our co- election advocates, our longtime friends in media to disseminate this far and wide.
TIBOK PINOY is a hope and a prayer. It will not happen overnight. It will take many small steps before we can make big strides. But we believe. We have to believe that our hearts, sometimes straddled by so many worries can beat, pulse and throb PINOY. TIBOK PINOY. And once a Model Filipino, we will learn to look for the same qualities in our leaders and learn to vote in leaders who are Model Filipinos as well.
TIBOK PINOY…read about the model Filipino in our books. Learn about him. Then…become him.
TIBOK PINOY…it is our battle cry . We invite you to make it yours too.
From all of us in PPCRV… thank you!
