Wednesday, September 03, 2008 Valdehuesa: Crying About Mindanao NPAs By Manuel Valdehuesa Street Talk
THE story of failed states tells us that corruption, opportunism, incompetent leadership, and failure of democratic processes are the prime causes of national disintegration and, ultimately, a nation's downfall.
As of last count, Mindanao has 25 provinces, 27 cities, 407 municipalities, and over 10,000 barangays. That's over ten thousand local governments; each with employee counts of a few dozen to thousands, and every one of them sworn to serve the common good.
These employees include executive, legislative, and judicial officials, from governors and mayors to councilors and judges, from barangay and kabataan chairmen to their kagawads. A congressman represents every district and two senators represent the region. The executives and legislators have hotshot assistants, advisers and consultants at their beck and call. Thousands of police and armed forces personnel support them, as do civilian volunteers and committees, tanods and non-government organizations, and field units of national agencies.
If you do a head count, Mindanao has perhaps half-a-million government officials or persons in authority, with offices practically everywhere - in hinterlands, on lowlands, along seacoasts. All have important-sounding titles and job descriptions, everyone earning salaries, allowances, and benefits as befitting public servants.
Public servants are workers hired to do the bidding of their principals. The principals are the three peoples of Mindanao: Lumad highlanders, Moro plainsmen, Christian lowlanders. From their taxes, billions are paid to salaries and perks of the public servants - billions that keep them fed, clothed and sheltered, billions to give them a life of dignity and privilege. In turn, the public servants swear to serve the three peoples in whose behalf they're supposed to promote social justice and development - the be-all and end-all of public service.
But for all their decades on the payroll, have these public servants complied with their oath of office? Democracy is still a joke, its processes a nightmare. So many of the three peoples are idle and without jobs, hungry and without food, sick and without medicine, ignorant and without hope of enlightenment. Much of what the public sees by way of performance are political gimmicks and self-serving claims with little or no resemblance to reality -- such as statistics trotted out by oligarchs from on top, abstract figures that do not assuage privation below.
Something is very wrong with our social order. It's dysfunctional. It doesn't fulfill expectations -- instead of contentment, resentment; instead of harmony, strife; instead of optimism, despair; instead of empowerment, helplessness. It's giving democracy a bad name!
If Mindanao's public servants perform their duty competently and earnestly, not a single barangay in their jurisdiction would be without services or development activities. The inhabitants would be healthier and more productive - working, earning, studying, cooperating with government, maybe even paying taxes. There would be less idleness, discontent, or mischief. The Lumad, Muslim, and Christian peoples would feel comfortable sharing the same living spaces - harmonious, cordial, hospitable. There would be no cause for violence or war. But it is not so.
Faced with all this, one could conclude that the public servants are NPAs - Non-Performing Assets. Are they simply free-loaders on the island's bounty and on its people's toil?
So bleak this portrait of Mindanao's NPAs, it is enough to make a Heldrit Saab, an Ernie Pelaez, a Rey Fuentes, or an expatriate like Marjorie Sheng-Green cry!
A former UN executive and peace negotiator under the Cory administration, Manny heads the Gising Barangay Movement and writes Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Email: valdeman_esq@yahoo.com
