There are many roles, and no shortage of talent, but there is also only one real answer. The last of a three-part opinion series, published in Rappler on September 2, 2022.
The news that former vice president Leni Robredo has been named a Hauser Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School for the coming semester thrilled many of her supporters, but it also deepened the lingering doubt among other supporters that Robredo is not returning to politics.
The prestigious fellowship, aside from being a recognition of exemplary leadership qualities that the famous school wants its students to make their own, gives Robredo the opportunity to spend a few months in academic retreat in the United States. But it is time away, not only from the daily nitty-gritty of establishing Angat Buhay NGO, in her words, as the "largest volunteer center" in the country, but also from the grittier daily work of establishing a viable political opposition.
This is not to begrudge her the latest of many honors; she surely deserves a break from nine years of unremitting political work. (It is very much a break in the Robredo sense: not a rest from labor, but a break through a different kind of work.) And it is only for about three months.
But the fears about her possibly and finally turning her back on active politics are real, shared—and reasonable. At its most basic, politics really is the art of the possible. But that necessarily practical art is conditioned by intangibles, like momentum and personality and mood and fate.
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