At this crucial point in our history, Filipinos should ask themselves these questions:
What kind of country do we wish to see for ourselves, to bequeath to our children, and our children’s children?
If the answer to that first question is a very different one to the one in which we live today, what are we going to do to reach that seemingly faraway promised land?
We are a society that has lost its way. With common good as its ideology, Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP) offers a way out of this deplorable situation. To achieve its vision and mission, AKP has two distinct but interrelated components: one is education and the other is political action. And in line with its education component, AKP has developed the PASSPORT TO A NEW PHILIPPINES.
The PASSPORT is intended to serve as a convenient and trustworthy companion in this troubled world for all Filipinos who want change for the better, and want to find meaning and fulfillment in life by loving God and serving others.
The PASSPORT promotes character building, values formation, good manners and right conduct. It provides basic political education that touches on human life, the dignity of the human person, the political community (starting with the family and the barangay), politics, justice, peace, democracy, truth, separation of church and state, religion and politics.
The PASSPORT also includes AKP’s founding principles and its list of specific objectives – all aimed at enhancing the common good and promoting the politics of virtue and the politics of duty, the politics of transparency and public accountability, the politics of good citizenship and stewardship.
As Pope Benedict XVI recently underscored when he received the bishops of Paraguay in September 2008, “A big part of the vocation of Christian laypeople is their participation in politics in order to bring justice, honesty and defense of true and authentic values, and to contribute to the real human and spiritual good of society. The role of the laity in the temporal order, and especially in politics, is key for the evangelization of society.”
The Pope in his address to the Pontifical Council of the Laity on Nov. 15, 2008 confirmed “the necessity and urgency of the evangelical formation and pastoral accompaniment of a new generation of Catholics working in politics, that they be coherent with the professed faith, that they have moral firmness, the capacity of educated judgment, professional competence and passion for service to the common good.”
The education aspect of AKP will be undertaken at the family- BEC-barangay level, local churches in collaboration with interested non-government organizations, civic clubs, and various religious organizations.
AKP’s efforts to introduce a prophetic politics of personal and social transformation dovetail with the call: “REFORM YOURSELVES AND BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL” (Mark 1:15).
The Philippines will change only if Filipinos first change individually. The PASSPORT, based on this premise, is designed to jumpstart the process of change.