Leadership is passed, not snatched: Former President

Santo Domingo.- Former president Leonel Fernández on Sunday said to enter combat the adversary will always want to "morally annihilate" a leader, and only time will tell if they were honest, ethical and moral.

He said the successor should be faithful and loyal to the values and principles espoused with his mentor, because otherwise that leadership will lack values. "The adversary will try to disqualify him morally, because he knows that if he disqualifies him morally, than one cannot continue to exist as a leader, because leadership rests on the credibility that is essentially an ethical foundation."

In his keynote ship "Leadership and power: how to be leaders in the 21st Century" before hundreds of young adults who launched the Youth Movement with Leonel (JUDEL), at Hotel Embajador, the former President described a cycle of leadership he says starts at its birth, grows and reaches a peak, and begins to descend, and that’s when the time comes to hand the torch over to the new leadership.

"The passing of the torch requires several things; first the patience of the one who could receive it, because you cannot enter into a struggle with the one who has it. That’s what I’ve said at some point that the torch is passed, the torch isn’t snatched, because he who attempts to snatch the torch is burned by it.”

Fernandez said there’re no permanent defeats or victories in politics, adding that no one can be a good leader if they haven’t been a good disciple.