BANTAY
GOBYERNO
Ike
Señeres
I must be the most
naive citizen of this country, because I still believe that perhaps in my
lifetime, the politics of performance will eventually prevail over the politics
of patronage, and one day this country will be free from extreme corruption. I
also believe that one day; we will be able to eradicate extreme poverty in this
country. Please note however that the operative word in these two notions is
“extreme”, meaning that there will still be some amount of corruption and
poverty here and there, but not so much being the norm or even the dominant mode.
By having “extreme” as the qualifier, I am able to defend myself of being
accused of day dreaming, even if it is my right to do so, and it does not cost
me anything.
If
I am crazy to think that extreme corruption, then the rest of the UN would also
be crazy, because “to sustainably reduce corruption and bribery in all their
forms” is among the targets of the 16th SDG, with the specific goal to
achieve “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” on or before the 2030
deadline. And so I could rightfully say that if indeed I am day dreaming, then
I am not really alone, because the rest of the UN is day dreaming with me.
In
general terms, the 16th SDG “is dedicated to the promotion of peaceful and
inclusive societies for sustainable development, the provision of access to
equal justice for all, and building effective and accountable institutions at
all levels”. In so many words therefore, the 16th SDG is all about good
governance, because there could be no good governance if there is no equal
justice for all and if there are no effective and accountable institutions at
all levels.
It
also goes without saying that if there are effective and accountable
institutions, there would be no corruption, or at the very least, it would be
minimized. It also goes without saying that access to equal justice and
effective and accountable institutions could not be built if national and local
officials will not perform as they should.
Without
going into so much detail, it could actually be said that since discretion is
the root of corruption, the removal of discretion by way of building effective
and accountable institutions could actually remove or minimize corruption.
Stretching this argument further, it could also be said that since corruption
is one of the causes of poverty, then the removal or minimization of corruption
could actually reduce poverty also.
Going
directly to the point, it could actually be said that if the politics of
performance would prevail over the politics of patronage, then it could
possibly remove or minimize corruption, and in the process actually reduce
poverty also because it is corruption that aggravates poverty. These are cycles
of evil that have to be broken by the circles of the good.
Without
any doubt, it could be said that in this country, we practically failed to
harness the power of mass media in promoting the politics of performance and
good governance. The good news is that we now have social media as another tool
for promoting these two causes.
Not
only that, we also have the power of mobile messaging that we could tap, both
in the form of ordinary text messages and in the form of mobile apps. We also
have the advantage of being the text messaging capital of the world. On top of
that, we have about 50 million Filipinos in Facebook, practically half our
population. It is now up to us to move forwards with the powerful combination
of mass media and social media to bring about change in our country.
Aside
from the need to bring about change in our country, we also need to achieve
sustainable development, an objective that requires us to meet all of the 17
SDGs. We need to be aware however that as a matter of fact, we as a country
failed to meet the previous 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a failure
that actually brought us a national embarrassment, considering that we are one
of the original founders of the UN.
On
the positive side, we still have the time to meet the 2030 deadline of the
SDGs. Aside from the SDGs we also have the opportunity to meet the targets in
our own Philippine Development Plan (PDP), which has similar targets pertaining
to poverty reduction and the eradication of corruption.
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