Monday, September 10, 2007
'Youth, assert yourselves'
By Linette C. Ramos
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
FOUR Philippine presidents have something in common—they were all grandparents when they were in office.
And unless today’s youth start believing in themselves and the government leaders start trusting the young, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña predicts the trend could continue.
He believes that like his grandfather and Cebu’s “Grand Old Man”, young Cebuanos can occupy high government positions and become leaders in their own right.
With few young people elected into office, he urged officials to trust in the youth, just as the country trusted the late president, Don Sergio Osmeña Sr.
The mayor lamented that as Cebu progresses, fewer young people are getting their share of government positions.
This, he said, calls for a closer look at the lives of Philippine heroes and former government leaders.
Osmeña Sr. was only 28 when elected as the Congress’ first speaker in 1907 to become the highest elected Filipino official that time.
He held the position in the second, third and fourth Congress before becoming a Philippine Commonwealth president.
“It’s kind of hard to follow that, maybe because our leaders are just getting older and older. Is it because the old have no confidence in the youth, or is it because our youth don’t have confidence themselves?” Mayor Osmeña wondered.
He spoke in yesterday’s commemoration of the late president’s 129th birth anniversary.
Older
Even for the presidency, he said, Filipinos always likely to elect somebody who is already a grandfather, or a grandmother.
“Today, you see that more and more we are not electing a president who is not a lolo or a lola…. We feel proud to represent the family of Don Sergio. We try to keep up to the best of our ability to emulate his sense of justice and fairness; but even among us Osmeñas, the leaders are getting older and older,” said the mayor, who is now 56 years old.
He was 39 when elected as Cebu City mayor for the first time in 1988.
Richard, his nephew and a fourth-generation Osmeña, is a neophyte city councilor at 40.
“It is time for you young people to assert yourselves, believe in yourselves, and help lead our community to a brighter future,” the mayor told some 300 people gathered at the marker of Don Sergio along Osmeña Blvd. yesterday morning.
City Hall and barangay officials, Presidential Assistant for Central Visayas Felix Guanzon, representatives of government agencies and civic groups, and Osmeña clan members attended the mass and floral offering.
Speaking for the heirs of the former president, Richard thanked those present for remembering his great-grandfather, whom he said “was a person with a vision and a heart who touched the lives of the Filipinos.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 10, 2007 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
|
