POLITICAL power is a delicate force. It can be used for good or bad, for broad or narrow ends, for altruistic or selfish purposes.

Not everybody can handle political power responsibly. It requires goodness of heart, purity of purpose, competence, maturity, and an empowering personality.

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An incompetent person, no matter how well-meaning, cannot be expected to exercise power responsibly or in the service of justice, fairness, and the common good.

To bestow power upon such a person will only drive him to the limits of shamelessness, greed, corruption, arrogance. He will not seek to empower others, only himself.

He will plot and scheme and conspire not only to keep the power for himself, but prevent others from ever acquiring it – a phenomenon being acted out at local and national levels today.

It is absolutely important for a community to be discriminating and circumspect in deciding who are to hold political power in their behalf.

Trapos, or traditional politicians, proliferate in our society because of careless, ill-conceived, or irresponsible electoral choices. We allow simple and simple-minded Juan de la Cruzes to run for office. Once in power, they become trapos -- people who cannot handle power responsibly.

It is why too many underachievers and mediocre people infest the halls of power in our society. Unfit for public office, they are incompetent pretenders to the throne.

The extent of their infestation is such that mediocrity and underachievement are now the role models for aspiring leaders from the barangay upward.

Leadership, a very precious social commodity, has become so devalued that any Juan, Pedro or Jose with minimal or no education, ability or character actually dare to venture into politics.

Ill equipped, badly motivated, ignorant of the harm their ignorance can inflict upon society, they aspire to leadership – doing so by camouflaging their shortcomings.

To compensate for their inadequacy, they posture and simulate competence, become pedants, and resort to gimmicks to endear themselves.

Typically, they turn imperious, brook no dissent, and go to great lengths to parade their power and show everyone who’s the Boss. They become victims of their insecurity.

Sporting superior airs, they are impervious to the popular will, egos bloated beyond proportion. They seek to dominate instead of serve, martinets who mistake demagoguery for statesmanship.

To such leaders, public opinion carries little or no value. Any clamor for reform merely emboldens them towards vainglorious pursuits and pushes them to the limits of shamelessness and arrogance.

They become defiant, determined to hang on, and do everything to prevent others other than family and crony to rise to power.

This is what boundless ambition does to a corrupted citizen who is blinded by power, the effect of mediocrity and greed wedded to power.

It is an affliction that plagues a sitting president no less than a trapo mayor, vice-mayor, councilor or barangay official. And the spectacle is amply manifest around us today.

Watch the City Council in session on Tuesday next week and see what I mean.

A former UN executive and vice chair of the Local Government Academy, Manny heads the Gising Barangay Movement: valdehuesa@gmail.com.