Healthy politics

PEOPLE throughout the world tend to associate politics with underhanded tactics such as vote-buying, mudslinging, character assassination and all kinds of lapses of judgment. But Dr. Alfredo Bengzon, who once served as secretary of health and a close adviser to President Corazon Aquino, offers an alternative definition of politics: a process by which an individual, organization, community or country clarifies and affirms its values and priorities, and subsequently with the use of power, mobilizes itself to achieve these.

Dr. Bengzon offered the definition in a speech last Tuesday at the University of the Philippines' College of Medicine, part of an ongoing colloquium series to celebrate the college centennial. Dr. Bengzon's topic was "The Politics of Health," but after his speech, I felt he had helped us to think of how we can craft healthy politics.

Dr. Bengzon should know, bearing many scars from political battles, from pushing through with the Generics Act, which earned him the ire of the Philippine Medical Association and multinational drug companies to heading the Philippine government panel that had to deal with the imperial US Embassy on the issue of US bases in the Philippines.

Power and priorities

Politics, Dr. Bengzon reminds us, deals with power, and is therefore all pervasive, to be found in all kinds of settings, from the Vatican's College of Cardinals to our bedrooms.

He went on to do a bit of "story-telling," citing experiences from his own professional life as a physician, to illustrate the many situations where politics takes place. The first story he narrated dated back to his internship days, way back in the 1960s, when he and a friend had to shell out money -- all of P5, at a time their monthly allowance was P8 -- to buy medicine for an epileptic patient because the Philippine General Hospital had run out of money for medicine.

The challenges were to grow with the years. His second story dealt with having to rehabilitate the ABM Sison Hospital, which was on the verge of bankruptcy when he was asked to head its management team. We know how well he did, to the point where the hospital, now the Medical City, is now one of the country's premiere hospitals.

From the epileptic patient to a hospital facing bankruptcy, Dr. Bengzon moved on to become health secretary, in a post-dictatorship situation where the government's coffers had been plundered dry. Again, he had to become "political" to get a health budget.

From power to principles

In all these instances, the challenge was to try to use one's power, albeit limited, to keep health as a top priority. What made this more difficult, Dr. Bengzon explained, was that medical school and specialty training didn't quite prepare him, and other physicians, to deal with such crises.

Yet what kept him going were certain values and principles. Dr. Bengzon described how, in the early days of martial law, he had spoken out to his students about good governance. As a neurologist, he used the brain as a metaphor: the brain directs the body's many vital functions, but is also dependent on the functioning of those other parts of the body. That, he believed, was what was "natural" and that applied as well to society. Dr. Bengzon remembers ending his lecture by saying: "And what should we do when the laws of nature are violated? We should resist."

He received a visit shortly after from someone dressed in barong Tagalog who warned him: "Just stick to medicine, if you know what's good for your health."

But Dr. Bengzon had been raised in a family that would fit his definition of "political" in the way they valued the freedom to think and to speak. He was not to be silenced; instead he looked for kindred spirits and joined one of the underground movements: "We were a cell. We had code names. The Medical City was our house of freedom."

As he spoke, I looked at one of the walls in the auditorium, where there was a large poster showing martyrs from the Marcos dictatorship, including two of the college's own alumni, Dr. Bobby de la Paz and Dr. Johnny Escandor. They, too, were political, giving up their lives for their politics.

But Dr. Bengzon took pains to remind the audience that health is more than doctors and doctoring. His most moving story was about Bing Magala, a government midwife in the northern province of Abra. He first met her in 1990 after she had been caught in an encounter between the military and the New People's Army and lost her left kidney and spleen, a part of her intestines and ... a four-month pregnancy. Yet when Dr. Bengzon asked why she wasn't resting, she answered, simply, "Kasi po walang magsisilbi sa mga tao kundi ako." [It's because no one would serve the people if not I].

Four years later, Bing drowned while trying to cross a swollen Abra River. In her backpack were vaccines intended for a remote village.

From power to magic

Dr. Bengzon's eloquence is well known as well as the way he appeals to both hearts and minds. You could see that dual effect in his reactors -- Dr. Eddie Dorotan, Dr. Dominga Padill and medical student Roselyn Mateo -- each of whom talked of their own dilemmas while trying to serve people in a world mired in the more negative aspects of politics.
Later, other faculty members and students were to add their questions, mostly on what one could do as individuals ... and if there was any value in trying to change the situation.

Dr. Bengzon was empathic that one couldn't separate the challenges we face as individuals from those of the nation. Medical students begin their training full of ideals but something happens during their training that hardens them, perhaps allowing despair and hopelessness to take over. I thought, that as a nation, we are also on the edge of a precipice, all too ready to disengage and to flee.

We are all students, Dr. Bengzon declared early in his speech, and perhaps the most important lesson we need to derive from our battles is that "trust compels accountability" and that the greater the trust people have in someone, the greater the imperative for that person to find ways to live up to that trust.

As I listened to him talking about trust, I thought not just of midwives like Bing Magala but also of the other brave souls who inspire us in these difficult times. There's Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani and the government officials who have dared to defy President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's "gag order," risking their jobs and their retirement benefits, in the interest of truth. That is unconditional accountability. That is the politics Dr. Bengzon describes.

Dr. Bengzon assures us: "Once you embrace that principle [of accountability]), you will find a way to respond and deliver, discovering many things you never imagined were there in you. I believe that desire unlocks magic."

Unlocking new worlds, we just might discover that if politics is about power, the greatest power is that of a moral life.

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