Participatory democracy

BANTAY GOBYERNO
Ike Señeres

I met Atty. Cita Garcia for the second time. She is one of the staunch advocates of the adoption of the jury system here. It was a good time for me to be reminded that participation in a jury is one of the rights and obligations of citizens in a real democratic system, a right that is equal to the right to vote, as a matter of fact.

The right to vote in an election in a manner of speaking gives us the means to participate in the executive and legislative processes, because we are the ones who chose the people who run our government and make our laws, even if indirectly. The adoption of the jury system will in effect complete our rights to participate in the three branches of government.

I received an email from Mr. Andy Rosales, and in that email he reminded me that there is another means for us citizens to participate in the executive process, but unfortunately we are practically ignoring the said means. I am referring to the rights and obligations of citizens to participate in the mandated development councils at the barangay, municipal, provincial and regional levels.

It is ironic to think that while the people in the Middle East are giving their lives for the sake of democracy, we on the other hand are wasting our opportunities to take advantage of the democratic process. Citizen participation in the development councils is supposed to be through the involvement of local non-government organizations (NGOs), but this set-up is very much disorganized now.

In order to address the disorganized state of NGOs at the local levels, I believe that it is now time to organize local chapters of the Socio-Economic Development Alliance (SEDA) at the barangay, municipal, provincial and regional levels, all managed by a central office at all regional centers. Needless to say, the officers at the central office should also be the ones who will attend the meetings of the Regional Development Councils (RDCs).

In order to establish order in the regular meetings of SEDA at all local levels, I have written a set of protocols that will be used in these meetings, along with Robert’s Rules of Order that should also be used. Any organization that is interested in getting a copy of this protocol may contact me and I will send it via email. If you have any contacts at these local levels, please let me know.

The Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) is supposed to be the overall framework of all the mandated development councils. All the reports of all local councils are supposed to be submitted to main office of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), where the secretariat of the MTPDP is located. Fortunately, NEDA is also the secretariat of the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), and because of this dual role, NEDA is really in a position to coordinate all developmental and environmental concerns.

In the same manner that we get what we pay, we also get the government that we deserve. President Noynoy Aquino is correct in saying that we the people are his “boss”, but that does not mean that the government should be doing all the work, and we the people should just remain as passive spectators. Since the mechanisms for participatory democracy are already in place, let us now become active in good governance through the local chapters of SEDA.

As a service to the nation, SEDA should become active in continuously monitoring and reporting all the socio-economic indicators that could be used by NEDA in particular and by the government in general. This should include the poverty rate, the illiteracy rate, the mortality rate, the crime rate, the unemployment rate and many other known measures. On top of these, we should come up with new measures that are still relatively unknown, such as the hunger rate and the homeless rate.

The poverty rate, the illiteracy rate and the mortality rate are measures that are being monitored by the United Nations under the framework of the Human Development Index (HDI). It would be fair to say that the mortality rate is directly related to the crime rate, and that the poverty rate is also directly related to the unemployment rate, therefore we should be conscious of these inter-relationships.

Since mortality, illiteracy, hunger and poverty appear to be our four biggest national problems, I have come up with a collective approach that will deliver Health, Education, Agriculture and Livelihood solutions, otherwise known as the HEAL framework. This is going to be the working framework of SEDA. Health is the solution to high mortality. Education is the solution to illiteracy. Food is the solution to hunger. Livelihood is the solution to poverty. People will always die because of one reason or another, but at least, we could lower the mortality rate.

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