EDITORIAL : APRIL 2022

MAY 9.  In a few days we will trek to the polls. We will vote. In the intervening days before May 9, there is time to discern, to reflect so that we vote in an informed and educated way.  Having served in PPCRV/ Parish Pastoral Council, the Comelec’s accredited citizen arm, for over a decade,  I have learned to keep my counsel. But to keep my counsel does not mean to refrain from counselling on and desisting from Voter’s Education.  In the tradition of neutrality that PPCRV has honed in me, we are posting tools which can help in providing a process for deciding on the next leaders of our country.  The Cloud Diagram that we generated through Mentimeter, based on independently- inputted responses of alumnae, friends and family, shows the characteristics that our  respondents are looking for in the next  Philippine President. We offer the diagram not as an answer but as a process.  We ask you to not to take our word for it, but to decide on which characteristics you are looking for in a leader.  Then challenge your selection by weighing each candidate against those characteristics that you list as most important.  We ask not for you to vote for a particular candidate.  We ask for you to give weight and value to your vote by  studying, separating fact from fiction, discerning… and only after a thoughtful and rigorous process, to decide.  It is all we can ask of each voter.

But before the elections, a celebration. Mother’s Day!  Rudyard Kipling said it best:

“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”

There is an element of the divine in each of us, but surely mothers have a larger than normal dose!  The process of giving life and birthing is a miracle in itself, as is the child every mother cradles and loves.  Mothers will lay down their lives  without thought or hesitation, throw all caution to the wind and brave everything bar none for her child.  She is as gentle as a snowflake and as fierce as a lion.  She is all the adjectives rolled into one, because she plays the role of everyone rolled into one.  Fittingly, this edition is an ode to all mothers.  We opened up our pages and some alumnae responded by writing heartfelt tributes to their moms.  We also feature 2 beautiful stories, both about a mother and a child, both about struggles, anxieties, fears, pain.  But since this is an April edition too, we epitomize the redemptive hope of Easter through journeying with our mother and child tandems to their eventual resurrection and conversion.  We pay homage to other mothers too…Pet Mamas!   Get ready to ooh and ahh at the adorable pooches and fur babies who bring out the most maternal qualities in all of us!

When we next post our June edition of this online website, we will know who our next leaders will be.  Leaders will change.  Will we, the citizenry, become agents of change too?  Change is coming.  Are we ready for it? 

ANA DE VILLA SINGSON