THE ETHICAL LEADER

his is the kind of leader who will not employ questionable means to achieve an end, achieving goals not through treachery but truthfulness and persuasion. When they are found to have done something wrong, such leaders will voluntarily give up their posts because this is the right thing to do.

In 2007, Brazil’s Senate president Renan Calheiros resigned after a magazine reported that he had used funds from a lobbyist to pay for the child support of his daughter from an extramarital affair with a television journalist.

New York governor Eliot Spitzer did the same thing in 2008 after getting embroiled in an ethics scandal involving an alleged high-priced prostitution ring. Yoshitada Konoike, Japan’s deputy chief cabinet secretary, likewise resigned in 2009 after a magazine reported that he had used an official rail travel pass to take his mistress to a resort.

This may be a strange virtue in a society where many of the country’s politicians not only have one but several mistresses who benefit from public coffers. But there’s always room for change in the system.

Co says voters who want an ethical leader should find out if the candidate: (1) can demonstrate good moral character; (2) has a circle of associates who are people of integrity and are pro-reform; (3) is an advocate of meritocracy; (4) can prosecute and punish offenders; and (5) can be transparent in the use of public funds.

Appropriate adage:
“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic,
nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." – Martin Luther King Jr.

Real ethical leader:
Lal Bahadur Shrivastav Shastri, third prime minister of India and a significant figure in the Indian Independence Movement who resigned from his earlier post as minister of railway and transport, accepting moral responsibility for a railway accident that killed 144 people

Reel ethical leader:
Wise counselor Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings"