AND not the least, rights-based issues are the most relevant issues that everyone should suppose to talk about, or challenge, from now to the run up to 2022 elections, nationally and locally.
Good governance essentially refers to how local government exercises its powers and responsibilities vis a vis delivery of basic services defined by the Local Government Code of 1991 (LGC) that improve people's quality of life; local government unit (LGU) planning and management of its land and natural resources that is adaptive to national and regional thrusts, to climate change, risks reduction and pandemic, and that which adequately met the needs and concerns of the present generation without sacrificing needs of generations after.
It also includes LGU's commitment to open and participatory governance, ensuring effective participation of key sectors and inclusivity of all its development programs and projects; and not the least, LGU's adherence to standard measures for transparency and accountability for all its decisions and actions.
Urban development refers to how local governments organize, reorganize, plan, assess, replan, transform their resources, territorial jurisdiction, their people, their geo-bio-physical peculiarities, experience and knowledge in area and resource planning utilizing all available designs and structures aesthetically enriching and acceptable to humanity. In short, how to democratize and humanize resources, people, structures, and match them with visions and goals of government and its people.
Rights-based issues refer to the respect and support that LGU gives to what matters most to the people, the workers, farmers, fishers, indigenous peoples (IPs), youth, women, urban poor, vendors, transport workers, senior citizens, persons with disabilities (PWDs), overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), among others.
Pandemic response is something new for us, and so for our LGUs whose systems, programs and projects are not adaptive to the plague. Essentially, it is how LGU and its people, not just the LGU, work together to retard or stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus that has plagued the world, our nation, our city for one and a half years now and still ravaging us.
Blaming the LGUs, a case to most LGUs nationwide, for unpreparedness, inefficiency and poor responses, and even suspecting that its local officials have raked privately funds for public interests are too sweeping accusations by people who expect local officials to be perfect and upright for all times. Let’s not be hypocritical about it, had they, the opposition critics and their political partisans, been in the position that confronted the pandemic the first time, they would have been in a quandary about what solutions to take.
But the challenge is also how fast the LGUs have learned their lessons and improve their counter-strategies to the pandemic.
In all, I would truly appreciate it if friends and foes of the LGUs study, learn and level up the issues they want to bring up for the purpose of helping correct local governance, not destroy, local government officials using nasty and dirty propaganda.
Bacolod City government is a case in point. I understand and respect the opposition critics and their political partisans for advocating change and development, for I know and believe that city of Bacolod still needs a lot of rectification and improvement. But it should not overlook or worse, dismiss, or distort the positive changes and transformation that the incumbent government has done vis a vis the fundamentals I have mentioned – governance, urban development, pandemic response, and rights-based issues.
Change and development are noble issues, or even platforms, to advocate. But they should accompany it with more constructive and positive themes and approaches, educative way, and talk in vivid, viable, and doable, even experiential terms, to prevent unnecessary debates between hypothetical propositions or dreams or facades, and the actual realities and dynamics of governance.
And instead of using squid tactics, dirty propaganda, fault-finding, hate-stirring, and highly polarizing divisive issues that obscure the real purpose of themselves offering as alternative with best options, they should offer the best ways and practices for government to function as a social contract, as convergence of forces for change and development using the subjects and themes I have mentioned here.
Changing government for the better is not like creating a crowd in a cockfighting arena. Neither it is short of stirring, fueling people to arms to destroy and topple the government. Such ways are short of waging revolution, albeit with reactionary purpose.
Luckily, we have not totally lost brains, manpower, resources, systems, and mechanisms for more civil, democratic, and humane ways to improve our system of governance.
Just a perspective.