By Churchill Aguilar
ONE of the requirements of all cities and municipalities after the recently concluded election was to formulate an Executive and Legislative Agenda (ELA). This is a process wherein the mayor, the vice mayor, and all their councilors (with the aid of department heads) will have to sit down and decide what direction will they take in the next three years even if they hate each other. In simple terms, this is a process of alignment of all departments in the local government so that they would have a guide on how to spend their money as well as check whether they will have tangible outputs at the end of their term.
This requirement from the DILG has made our office (XU-GLI) highly in demand in the last two months. In fact our schedules had been fully booked until September. This practically put me on the road most of the time. As of this writing I am in Bohol conducting this module, and by the time I get home next week I would only have about a few hours to change my suitcase for another ELA in Davao and then in Zamboanga del Norte. This ELA thing has made me live on my suitcase and on the road.
And while I enjoy the travels and royal accommodations, I know very clearly that our job is to disturb every place we get into. So far, there were mix impressions every time we leave a place. The majority were challenged to rise above the occasion and engaged in radical leadership (that gives us a sense of fulfillment), while a few must have regretted to have invited us after taking all our sharp tongues (at least they were not indifferent).
Let me share to you then why we have to be ruthless in disturbing them.
Most of the municipalities do not have a clear mission of why their local government exists. Usually it’s just the planning office crafting the ELA, bypassing the process of dialog and compromise. Almost always as well, their usual concept of governance is building roads, building schools, building hospitals and building practically all possible infrastructures. Another concept they have of successful governance is that if their municipality has an increase share of Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) or how much they get from the national budget. All these things are good but these things are not the reason why we voted for our mayors and our vice mayors. In fact, most of us don’t understand these terms, much more do we care about them.
Another worth pointing from how our municipalities function is that the legislative department is generally a puppet to the executive department. The councilors don’t seem to have a good grasp on how crucial their powers are and almost always end up to be just submissive to their mayors. I’m sure this is not also the reason why we voted for them.
Successful governance is not measured on how many roads our leaders built or how many basketball courts they have provided us. Authentic governance is measured on how the mayor, the vice mayor and the councilors use their respective powers to change what food I put on my table. Let me take Boracay for example; is it good governance to see how the island became a world’s tourist destination when only the rich owners of hotels got richer while the original inhabitants got displaced somewhere else and got poorer and poorer? How is that different from the Spaniards colonizing our country a long time ago?
The only measure of true success in governance in the Philippines is how our local leaders can decrease the poverty incidence in their locality. That is always our entry point as well as our exit. That is why in the process of conducting our ELA, we make sure that every person in the municipality knows very clearly how he or she can help augment the income of their people-that simple. The municipality has to align all their goals, programs, and projects for such result.