Redefining autonomy

BANTAYGOBYERNO

Ike Señeres

With all due respects to all those who will disagree with me as I write about this topic, it would be a fair warning to say that what I will write here is just my own opinion, and I am not alluding to anyone who might think that I am referring to their persons or beliefs.

Some might say that my ideas are too revolutionary, but rest assured that these are just words, and I am not exhorting anyone to take up arms just to push these ideas forward. However, I will also say that the gravity of our national problems would really need revolutionary ideas to solve them, for whatever these ideas may be worth.

As the saying goes, these are my “ten cents worth”, so to speak, and you can just take it or leave it. For sure, these ideas are too far right now from the present reality, and it might take some decades for these ideas to become real, so just relax and read on.

 As I see it, the national government agencies (NGAs), functioning as the operating units of the Executive Branch should just be the policy makers and program planners, and not the project implementers or the service providers. Before moving any further however, I would first say that that should be the proper sequence, for policy to be made first, after that the policies defined should become the basis for program planning. Moving down the line, all projects should just be the derivatives of program plans, meaning that there should be no projects that would stick out on their own, without being derived from a corresponding program plan.

 As it is now, most if not all of the NGAs have local offices in the regions and the provinces, all presumably implementing policies, programs and projects of all kinds and purposes. As it usually happens, many of these programs and projects are delivered as services, with some services being offered all the way down to the barangay level.

That is the way it is now, but that does not always have to be the way it should always be done. As it is now and even as we speak, most of these programs, projects and services are also being implemented by the local government units (LGUs). That being the case, I will now go straight to the point and say that all these could be and should be delegated or devolved or decentralized to the LGUs, perhaps with only a few exceptions such as the fiscal, diplomatic and defense functions.

 There is a lot of debate whether some functions of the NGAs should be devolved or decentralized to the LGUs. As I see it however, “delegated” is the more appropriate term, because it is the more prevalent term in management lingo. Besides, “delegation” is a legal fiction that would allow the process to push through, without any need to pass new laws that would make the action legal. Whatever term is used, I think we should just pursue the legal fiction that the LGUs are the “subsidiaries” of the NGAs, the latter being the central corporate entities. As it is defined, subsidiarity is the principle that says that the functions that local organizations could perform better should belong to them rather than to a central organization.

 The Local Government Code (LGC) is a beautiful piece of legislation but somehow, but somehow it seems that we could not fathom the depth of its meaning in between the beauty of its prose. If only we would read it and try to understand it, it has LOCAL AUTONOMY written all over it, and if only we could turn this law into practice, there is no more need to demand for any other autonomy in any other form.

It seems that our lawmakers are all so very good in crafting good English into good laws, but our executive officials have much more to learn in transitioning from words into realities. Based on our experience in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), we should have already learned that it is not enough to create centralized legal entities alone to bring in development. Instead, the local people must take control of their own future and work together for the development of their own localities.

 As it is now, the LGUs are getting their shares of the internal revenue allocations (IRAs). Up until the time that the countryside development fund (CDF) was abolished, the LGUs were supposed to be getting their shares from that

too, but let us just say that those funds were diverted somewhere else.

It seems that there are some plans to revive the pork barrel in some other form or with some other name, but will the money from revenue allocations and pork barrels ever be enough to fund local development and run local governance? My answer is no, and in order to give more money to the LGUs, I suggest that we turn over program management to the provincial governments and the project management to the municipal governments.

If you think that that is difficult to do, I will tell you that all we have to do is to require the NGAs to close down their provincial and municipal operations and to turn these over to the LGUs, along with their operating budgets.

No, I am not advocating that we abolish the local operations of the NGAs. What I am advocating is the transfer of their local functions to the LGUs, along with their operating budgets. Moving forward, we should avoid what happened in the devolution of the local hospitals, wherein we transferred the functions, but we did not transfer the operating budgets.

In the case of the police functions, we are wary that transferring these functions to the LGUs would result in the creation of local private armies. While there may be reasons for us to have such fears, when are we ever going to move towards local 4autonomy? Why should we be afraid when we have an Office of the Ombudsman, a Commission on Audit and a Congress that is supposed to make sure that there will be no anomalies in our governance?

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