Local development councils

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Ike Señeres

There ought to be a law that would punish those who would not implement the law. If that does not make sense to you, that is the best I could do in expressing my frustration about good laws that are passed, but are not implemented. I think Filipinos are uniquely gifted with the talent of crafting laws that are written in superb English, but it seems that we do not have the gift of implementation, and that is why our laws hardly go beyond the written form, probably just waiting to win literary awards. One law in particular is the Local Government Code of the Philippines (LGCP), not perfect as it is, but good enough until the next revision perhaps.

As I understand it, it should be the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) that should implement the LGCP. Either that or each of the respective Local Government Units (LGUs) should be implementing it. Either way, very few LGUs seem to be serious enough in convening the Local Development Councils (LDCs) that are supposed to meet at least twice a year at the barangay, municipal, provincial and regional levels. Even the LGUs that do meet seldom meet more than twice a year, thus showing that they are simply just paying lip service to the legal requirement.

In theory, these LDCs are supposed to be the venues for planning the distribution of the Internal Revenue Allocations (IRAs) in a democratic, transparent and participatory manner. Apparently what happens is that many LGUs are just fabricating fake minutes of their meetings, to make it appear that council meetings were actually conducted, and that way the corrupt local officials are able to use the funds as they please, without anyone knowing how and why it was used. If you ask me, this not only amounts to bastardizing democracy, it also amounts to killing it at the local level.

As the LGCP stipulates, local Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) are supposed to be represented in the LDCs with complete voting rights, and these NGOs are supposed to vote among themselves as to who among them should become the representatives. As it is happening now however, the corrupt local officials are just appointing their own allies to sit as the NGO representatives, and no one even knows if they are legitimate NGO leaders or not, because there is no proper election conducted at the local NGO sector. Strike two, because this also amounts to killing democracy at the local level.

Also in theory, the LGUs are supposed to have a local medium term development plan that should become the output of the LDCs, a plan that should serve as their roadmap. Without such a roadmap, no one would really know how the money from the IRAs would be used, not even the local people who are supposed to benefit directly from these funds. Even if these corrupt local officials could get away with submitting fabricating minutes of their meetings, I could not see how they could get away with submitting fake development plans. Either way, they would be liable for the crime of falsifying public documents.

In most cases, the traditional mass media at the local levels have not been successful in mobilizing the local NGOs so that they would participate actively in the LDCs. Either that, or the corrupt local officials have been successful instead in deploying their own fake NGOs and in keeping the legitimate NGOs out of these councils. The good news now is that these legitimate NGOs now have the alternative option of using the new social media in working for them. The truth is, the traditional mass media could be bought in some cases, but no amount of money could buy the new social media.

Perhaps one reason why the legitimate NGOs are not so active in the LDCs is that they do not have a well defined development framework to begin with. To address this apparent vacuum, I am pushing for the adoption of the Human Development Index (HDI) as the common development framework that could be used by all NGOs all over the country, in all levels all the way up to the regional level. Doing so would actually be an innovation, because no one seems to be using HDI now as a framework for measuring development success at the local level. The HDI was originally developed by the United Nations to measure development success at the national level.

Illiteracy rate, mortality rate and poverty rate are the three major areas of development success or failure that are measured by the HDI. By way of correlation, the way to ensure success in these measures is to implement development programs in education, health and livelihood, in that order. As I see it from my perspective, these programs could be enhanced by e-Learning, e-Health and e-Commerce, respectively. In 2012, the United Nations introduced the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI), an index that specifically measures deprivation of floors, assets, cooking fuel, electricity, toilets and safe water (FACETS) among the poor.

All told, HDI and MPI are already available for all NGOs everywhere, for them to become actively involved in the LDCs. They also have social media that they could use to mobilize local citizens to participate, aside from the usual email messages and text messages. In short, there is really no excuse now not to get involved in the LDCs. In other words, their own future is already in their own hands, and it is up to them now to take action.

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