Two sides of governance

PUNCHLINE

Ike Seneres

It seems that we are the only country in the world that deploys too many cleaners and traffic enforcers in our streets. I am not totally against the idea of hiring cleaners and traffic enforcers, but I wonder how much money we could save if only our people would obey the laws so that the costs of law enforcement would go down to normal levels.

As a student of political science, I know for a fact that there are two sides to the conduct of the law. One side is law enforcement; the other side is obedience to the law. Simple logic would tell us that the more obedience that would come from the side of the citizens, the lesser law enforcement would be needed. Conversely, we could say that the more law enforcement would come from the side of the government, the more obedience should also come about.

It could be said that America was built by the work ethics of Americans to work hard, to pray hard, to pay taxes and to obey the laws. I am sure that most Filipinos also work hard and also pray hard, but I am not sure whether most of us actually pay our taxes and obey the laws. There is a joke going around that here in the Philippines, laws are just “suggestions” for us to follow as we please. That’s not even funny.

In the same manner that there are two sides to the conduct of the law, there are also two sides to the conduct of governance, or good governance as it is often called. This is in a way redundant so to speak, because there is no such thing as bad governance, if good governance is properly conducted as it should be. The point however is there are two sides, and these are the citizens being the governed, and the public officials being the governors.

As the legal theory goes, the official government bureaucracy is only one side of the equation, the other side being the unofficial body of citizens that is supposed to do its part in making good governance work. As the legal theory goes further, good governance could not happen if only one side would do its part, meaning that the two sides have to “volt in” in order for it to work as it should.

As it should have happened, the so-called “civil society” was supposed to be composed of the enlightened elements of the body of citizens that was expected to take part in the process of governance, being supposedly more educated and more passionate than the rest of the regular citizenry. While this expectation is still valid, it appears that the good name of the “civil society” has been smeared by a few people among them who have chosen to take the crooked path.

By way of liberal interpretation, it could be said that all non-government organizations (NGOs) are also part of the body of citizens that are supposed to take part in the process of governance. As it actually happened however, the reputation of the NGOs was also smeared by those who fabricated fake entities in order to defraud the government of certain development funds.

Just like our environment that has been damaged and therefore needs to be restored, we also need to restore our damaged institutions no matter what it takes to do it. The truth is that we have so many other damaged institutions that need to be also restored. First things first, we need to restore the fundamental institutions that would be instrumental in restoring other institutions as a consequence. In this context, we should restore our civil society first, including our NGOs.

The truth is, there are already existing laws that provide for the active participation of citizens in the process of governance. The most powerful of these laws is the Local Government Code (LGC), a law that not only allows citizen participation in Local Development Councils (LGCs) from the barangay level all the way to the regional level; it also allows citizens to vote directly in all Barangay Assemblies. This legal right is similar to the rights of ancient Greek citizens to vote directly in their democratic councils.

For example, there is supposed to be a Municipal Development Council (MDC) that is independent from the Municipal Council (MC). According to the law, only the elected municipal councilors could participate and vote in the MC. On the other hand, the law provides that several representatives of the NGOs could participate in the MDC, to be selected from among their own members. Could we ask for more?

It seems that not too many people know that according to the law, barangay units are now considered as de facto corporations, meaning that they could do anything and everything that corporations could do, including borrowing money, lending money and investing money. Just like the corporations, barangay units are supposed to convene their stockholder’s meetings, and that is what Barangay Assemblies are supposed to do.

It also seems that not too many people know that Barangay Assemblies have the power to overrule the decisions of the Barangay Councils, in the same way that stockholder’s meetings could overrule the decisions of the boards of directors. In case you don’t know, the Barangay Councils are only supposed to function like the boards of directors, and they have no power over the Barangay Assemblies.

It is ironic that our people would go out of their way to ask for more rights, but they would not even treasure these rights when it is given to them. This is exactly our situation when it comes to good governance. We have the laws that would allow our participation in the process of governance, but the majority of our people have chosen not to get involved. As the saying goes, “you get what you pay”. What are we paying?

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