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We talked about gerrymandering where we create many local governments, but
sometimes this should not be resource; as the matter of fact, we should amalgamate
local governments within the context of their ability.
So, I did say we have had the decentralization since 1991. And we have had
four major aspects. It transfers the responsibility for the delivery of basic services,
regulation, it increase their power and increases their financial resources through what
was called the Internal Revenue Allotment. But, equally important is our
decentralization law. We created a very strong civil society. This morning in the
discussion in the plenary, we heard discussion on the importance of NGOs, the
importance of people’s organizations, the importance of civil society. And in our local
government goal in 1991, we actually had a specific provision that encouraged the
participation of civil society. If you had a local special body at the local level,
we reserved one-fourth to the local government.
A few moments Mr. Chairman, I’m aware of the time.
So, this slide, we’ll talk about local government goals since 1991. And we had
an administer of local government, and Oversight Committee to oversee if you make
the implementation of decentralization and devolution. There were some problems
including finance, including legislation, personnel, regulatory, etc. It was really an
experiment, but over the past 25 years, we have learned a lot.
I will end my presentation with… We have some good practices. Was it
successful? I’m part of the movement. It says, it was successful, but not as
successful as it could have been because it was really a learning process. And we’ve
had many good and best practices in these areas: health, environment, public finance,
peace initiative, social and economic development and productivity empowerment,
good and best practices. I was part of this movement in the Philippines when we
documented good and best practices. We call that Galing Pook, and that really
encourages me. People say, oh! they’re all warlords. They’re just corrupt. In Indonesia
they call them kakayaan. They have corruption, etc. But you know what, change of
paradigm, there are good and bad practices at the local level, and we have seen
them, including taking care of the environment, saving the river, public market. I can
talk about this later on. It’s all in there anyway. If you look all over the Philippines,
we’ve had many nice examples, very inspiring examples of how the local governments
are doing it. Going to as I said earlier, of how the local governments are teaching
national and not national teaching local. That’s very important. So, why are they
successful? Leadership is important, ownership by the bureaucracy, harnessing ICT, of
course, we have to work on ICT, what they cooperation and supporting ownership
ourselves.
So, on the balance… so, last few statements.
On the balance, we’ve had decentralization over the past 25 years. It was
enacted given the context of a highly decentralized government. The national ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ
government, of course resisted it, but we have the political to implement it.
