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Friday, May 26, 2006
Roperos: Politics and schools
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
ONE wonders how fast we build public school buildings in relation to the speed with which our women produce children. I am just thinking aloud because since I could remember, I have always heard of the talk about shortage of classrooms in our central school and in the outlying barrios.
My point is that the need for new classrooms every year is really an age-old one. It goes with the unbridled birth rate in our country. It is a continuing problem the country’s education program has to contend with every year.
The money that goes into the construction of new school buildings also grows annually. This year, it is more than P1 billion.
For the Central Visayas region alone, the amount allocated was P77 million, P31 million of it going to Cebu. But the amount will likely be good only for this year.
Once in a while, some good Samaritans donate school buildings to save pupils from taking their daily lessons under mango trees.
Last year, we wrote about an engineer-town councilor of Balamban who donated a school building in a barangay school with funds out of his personal pocket. The case is not unique, though, for there are quite a number of kindhearted citizens who come to the aid of our fund-beleaguered government regardless of whether politics is tied up with the deed or not.
Politics really is already ingrained in the social system of this republic that it has become common for the average citizen to suspect politics behind every move of anyone who is in politics.
Thus, even in the allocation of school buildings and other public projects, municipal mayors, congressmen, and governors are known to try to have a hand in it. It is to their political interest, after all, that the constituents know what they have been about.
In the current allocation of classrooms for schools in the region this year, congressmen have reportedly prepared the list of recipients and location of the new classrooms. What remains to be done would be the release of funds from budget office, and the construction of the buildings so that the “classroom-less” children in the barangays would not be exposed to the elements the whole year.
Of course, there will be grumbling about the politicians playing favorites in the allocation.
But our politicians, as a matter of survival and political imperatives, need to play politics. Some areas would have to live with the thought that their elective leader this time around does not seem to have a deep affection for barangay.
It’s a fact of politics, and sine qua non in a democracy, that always a certain measure of favoritism creeps into the politics of a community. It is as difficult to avoid as falling asleep in a mass with a homily that is both dull and boring.
Our educators should not really worry about politics influencing in some way the allocation of school buildings in their district. It should not matter really as long as it answers a need, and solves a problem of one community over another.
In time, succeeding allocations would have to be given to the community whose need would reach the level of top priority. It would be inevitable.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (May 26, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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