PUNCHLINE
Ike
Seneres
As the saying goes, “You get what you pay”.
Add to that the idiom that “If you give peanuts, you get monkeys”. That should
be our attitude towards democracy. If we do not make it work, it will not work.
And no one else could make it work, except the people who are supposed to
benefit from it. To put it another way, democracy is not like a vending machine
that will give us something of value if we put some coins into it.
As I remember from my
basic political science courses, democracy is a social contract wherein the
contractors, meaning the citizens are supposed to make good on their
obligations, and part of that is the duty not only to obey the laws, but also
to participate in the democratic process. Assuming that all good citizens are
paying their taxes, they are already paying something to the government, and
therefore they should get some good values, because they are not just paying
peanuts.
Aside from the
officially elected councils at the barangay, municipal and provincial levels,
there are officially mandated consultative councils at these same levels,
otherwise known as Local Development Councils (LDCs). According to the Local
Government Code (LGC), all sectors in these localities are supposed to be
represented in these consultative councils, by way of sectoral organizations
that are accredited by the Local Government Units (LGUs) as legitimate
Non-Government Organizations (NGOs).
Although these LDCs
are just supposed to be consultative in nature, there is a legal basis for
their proposals and advocacies to be considered by the LGUs in the passing of
local ordinances and in the implementation of policies, programs and projects.
As I see it from the perspective of basic political science, these LDCs may not
have the political power, but they are supposed to have the political
influence, because the LGC has provided the means for them to assert their
influence.
Aside from the
Internal Revenue Allocations (IRAs) that the LGUs are getting from the national
government, there is another source of money that is supposed to go to the
funding of local projects, and that is no other than the Countryside Development
Fund (CDF), also known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), also
known as the pork barrels.
The problem is, the
pork barrels are not released to the LGUs, because these are released instead
through the district congressmen who are elected from these same local
constituencies.
According to the legal
fiction that seems to be also perpetuated by conventional wisdom, these
district congressmen are supposed to have the capability to “see” what the
Congress itself could not “see”, in terms of identifying the local concerns
that would need priority development assistance.
By comparison however,
it would be reasonable to say that the LDCs would be in a better position to
“see” what these local concerns are, within an objective consultative context,
and not through a subjective intuitive context as “seen” by one person acting
alone.
At the national level,
there is supposed to be a Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP). As
stipulated in the LGC, each LGU in all levels is supposed to have their own
Medium Term Local Development Plans (MTLDPs), plans that they are supposed to
prepare with the full participation of all local sectors that are supposed to
be fully represented in their own LGCs.
It goes without saying
that these local development plans are supposed to be the legal basis for
utilizing the funds from the IRAs, in addition to their own local revenue
sources.
Even if there is no
clear stipulation in the LGC that the pork barrels should be included in the
pool of funds that would be used for implementing the MTLDPs, there is no
prohibition against doing that either. Although they are called by different
names, both the IRAs and the CDFs come from the same sources and these are the
citizens who are supposed to benefit from these monies.
Now that there are a
lot of issues about how are pork barrels are being used, it would be reasonable
to think that the district congressmen who would want to be above board should
just voluntarily turn over their CDFs to their local LDCs.
As I understand it,
these MTLDPs are supposed to be based on Land Use Plans (LUPs) that are in turn
supposed to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Years ago, GIS technology
was rocket science that most LGUs could hardly afford.
Nowadays however, GIS
is very affordable, such that even the barangay governments could already
afford it. Sadly however, many LGUs do not have their own LUPs, much less their
own GIS systems. If anyone knows of any LGU that would like to have their own
LUPs and GIS systems, please let me know.
In these modern times
when even the most trivial events are posted on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube,
it would not be too difficult perhaps for local citizens to get involved in
their own governance, by simply using these online social networking sites.
Aside from that, almost everyone now has a
camera that could be used to take pictures of anything that could be reported
on these social sites, and that could include pictures of local development
needs that neither the Congress nor the district congressmen could “see”.
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