TIMES of crisis are windows for great opportunity. That is an old Chinese saying. But in these troubling times (for many), what opportunities indeed lie ahead? There are quite a few and the promising thing is they seem to be opportunities that would open up given current trajectories or the way things are unfolding. Indeed, 2017 may be the year that developmental change finally proceeds.

The world is shifting away from the international policies of recent decades that, while they have created well-being for unprecedented billions of people, have likewise resulted in great tensions. Not just tensions between peoples but tensions between people and their environment and even tensions inside people due to an identity overly linked to consumerism rather than their inherent truths; consumerism that threatens the very sustainability of Mother Earth.

One such opportunity is the re-emergence within government of the area development paradigm or development framework under Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Gina Lopez. While Sixto K. Roxas was its initial advocate in the late 1960s it had unfortunately been bastardized in several big government projects that went puff! (just as the autonomous regional experience is going puff!) due to wrongful implementation, which in turn was due to a misunderstanding of what area, development is basically about.

With Secretary Gina at the helm of a major government department that has a direct and meaningful role in national development, the area development paradigm is set to take off and this time under the leadership of a capable and knowledgeable environment and natural resources secretary. For one, Secretary Gina has been a practitioner of area development approaching the various undertakings of the ABS-CBN Foundation in Palawan and other provinces wherein the local people were the implementers and the beneficiaries of the eco-tourism projects that simply highlighted the potential of their area (thus the term area development).

Secretary Gina knows that with the Philippines’ archipelagic territory, the mountain ridge ecosystem connects by streams, creeks, rivers to the various other ecosystems until the final one (within our territory), the coral reef ecosystem, the totality of which was once teeming with life. “Life in all its fullness” was certainly what the Philippines was (before the times of colonization and industrialization. But alas, development was under the unitary and sectoral paradigm).

Area development deepens this understanding of the fragile but critical relationships between and among interconnected ecosystems and working with the local people applies the principle of subsidiarity which states that functions and decision-making should be undertaken at the lowest possible hierarchical level and the role of the higher organizational level is to support those lower units undertaking the functions.

As Secretary Gina says, “area development is about nurturing and helping the local people nurture their local areas to unleash [their]productive potential”. This means making development based on the potentialities of the area. This is the better opposite to what has been going on since the Philippines became a country under colonial masters where the desires of the corporations were simply imposed on local areas that suited their businesses. And since business was all that mattered, they generally left the place worse off and, in many instances killing off the ecosystem that the locals could have relied on for sustenance. The zenith of this “devil may care” attitude seems to be the guiding principle of many large mines that decimate the geological and hydrological functions of the ecosystem leaving the locals in perpetual risk and scamming the Filipino people by leaving behind a permanent pit hole of humongous dimensions. It wouldn’t be surprising if the economic tab left behind by derelict mines long abandoned by mining companies that have been in turn abandoned by their shareholders are simply dumped on you and me, the taxpayers. Secretary Gina calls this “madness”.

Under the principle of subsidiarity, it is government’s role to assist local people co-create local sustainable economies based on the perpetual beneficial use of the local ecosystem bounties for even distant future generations. Thus, the shift towards federalism is timely in that area development and subsidiarity are wholly compatible with federalism. In fact, they are necessary complements to genuine federalism. Where unitarism (our present centralized system) brought us corporate-led sectoral and highly inequitable development, federalism should usher in community-based, ecosystem-sensitive area development that gives everyone who wants a chance to participate in the local economy that opportunity.

Thus, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is leading the way by selecting 29 priority areas to demonstrate area development and is enlisting the help of the Sixto K. Roxas Foundation that targets poverty eradication by creating the template of an expanded local social accounting matrix of the value-adding power of the local sectors and how incomes are distributed (or not distributed locally but remitted out of the local area). Secretary Gina wants all programs of the DENR like the National Greening Program, Bamboo Program, Biochar Program, Mangrove Rehabilitation Programs, and Mining Programs to be re-crafted along the principles of area development with its concrete manifestation of viable community enterprises that are networked to build up to scale and demonstrate the opposite of “trickle-down” (pinatulo) towards the alternative of “nurturing upwards,” or pinatubo.

President Duterte seems to be instinctively aware that the ideological lines are not anymore between the “left vs. the right,” the old Cold War mentality of these old ideologies (that ironically are united in their pinatulo paradigm as both ideologies rely on trickle-down sectors to benefit the locals) but between the primacy of nurturing people and ecosystems versus sectoral corporations (that have grown so large, moneyed and powerful), or in other words “pinatulo” vs. “pinatubo”. Thus, the push for federalism as a government organizational set-up where now, finally, area development can be its favored bride guided by the vow of subsidiarity.

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The author, a co-convenor of the Subsidiarity Movement International and the Federalist Forum of the Philippines, advocates for the bottom-up development model as well as proper decentralization, and the strengthening of regional governance. He served for 12 years in the Regional Development Council of Central Luzon as chair of the economic committee. He was a consultant for the Philippine Alternative Fuels Corp. (PAFC) and was on the board of trustees of the HARIBON Foundation. He is currently a member of the board of advisors of CDPI.

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THIS recent audience with the President is discussed in a three-part series in this column that started on December 15 and continuing on for the two succeeding Thursdays. This last encounter, the evening of December 5, was considerably different from the ones in the past. PRRD was more subdued and perhaps more reflective. I would venture to describe the engagement almost with panache on his part even with a modicum of elegance, except for a few expletives interspersed here and there that perhaps added emphasis and color to the conversation.

 

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THAT evening of December 5 when I had this conversation with the PRRD, he looked haggard and exhausted. He explained that he had to leave the Cabinet meeting twice that day, first to light up the Christmas tree at the Malacañang grounds and the second to meet with a special group of Chinese mainland visitors earlier, headed by Mr. Huang Rulun who gave P1.4 billion for the rehabilitation of the illegal drug surrenderees. Mr. Rulun had started his business here in Binondo Chinatown way back in 1986 and claims to have an emotional attachment to the Philippines. The President praised this philanthropist for his gesture and appreciated the fact that he asked nothing in return.

That the idea of Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte to make that monumental shift from our current 71-year-old unitary form of government that only brought the Filipino nation years of misery with the majority of our people living in abject poverty, one solution is for that paradigm shift towards a parliamentary/federal form of governance...something that most well-developed nations have adopted and achieved economic prosperity.

PAUL Hutchcroft, a scholar specializing in comparative and Southeast Asian politics, asked whether rather than symmetrical federalism across the country, the focus should instead be on asymmetrical arrangements that address injustices that hinder specific communities from achieving their full potentials.

While federalism is already part of ongoing discussions in the Philippine public arena, nevertheless, George R. M Anderson, formerly of the Forum of Federations Canada, believed that how the conversations would be framed is strategic.

Federalism is very diverse and Filipinos need not be hung up on one model. Admittedly, the slack in the discussion today is partly because government has not yet put forward the model for deliberation by Filipinos.

Since it will be up to us to decide, we can exercise more latitude by defining what problems the Filipino brand of federalism should address.

Amina Rasul of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy raised the query "if federalism is the answer, what is the question?" This was echoed by Hutchcroft who also asked about the basic problems needing to be solved.

Constitution expert lawyer Christian Monsod argued that the country’s key problems can be addressed without federalism. Monsod said that the underperformance in vital asset reforms (agrarian reform, urban land reform and housing, ancestral domains, and fisheries reform) are mainly due to factors that do not require fundamental reorientation of the political system.

Patronage politics, oligarchic rule, and regional inequities have also been discussed in many fora as among the political ills of our country, and used as arguments for federalism. Echoing one of the resource persons, ought not other measures that also effectively address the problems need to be explored further first before committing the country to system overhaul of the kind exemplified by federalism?

Conditions of success was also a running theme in the GAGF 2016.

Anderson contributed two social conditions: respect for rule of law, and a sense of nested identities (e.g. people are comfortable with having a regional or ethnic identity, and also a national one). The successful transition to federalism also required the build-up of capacity, particularly administrative, political and fiscal.

Lito Lorenzana of the Centrist Democratic Party Philippines had four preconditions: 1) political party reforms including the banning of turncoatism; 2) passage of an anti-dynasty law, 3) and a freedom of information law; 4) and electoral reforms. All four, which in his vie would be achieved under the Duterte administration, have to be pursued simultaneously.

The experiences of countries that tried different devolved and decentralized arrangements suggested the possibility of a staged approach rather than a sudden shift in political institutions, with the rate of transfer varying depending on conditions.

One of the resource persons asserted that obtaining peoples’ consent is vital. Instead of a rushed move towards a Philippine Constitutional Assembly, more initiatives have to be made towards securing Filipino agreement. Consent in this case needs to be freely given without coercion or deceit, prior to any undertakings, and on the basis of informed decision-making about problems that Filipinos deem need to be addressed.

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Read more: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/opinion/2016/12/16/maglana-takeaways-autonomy-governance-and-federalism-last-2-parts-515541

 

LAST Monday December 5, I had the privilege of meeting with President Duterte in Malacañang at 10 p.m., a “not so ungodly hour” considering that the last time I had this privilege was at 2:30a.m. in Davao’s Malacañang of the South. But this time, the President had directed his presidential kitchen to provide a simple dinner at around 9:00 p.m. – very timely indeed as hunger pangs overtook me as I had to rush to Malacañang from the airport at 7 p.m. for this appointment.

 

QUEZON CITY, Dec. 13 - Following the publication of the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of Republic Act 10754, also known as An Act Expanding the Benefits and Privileges of Persons With Disability (PWDs), on December 8 in two major national newspapers and its submission to the Office of the National Administrative Register, PWDs can start enjoying the expanded benefits and privileges that they are entitled to under the law on December 23, two days before Christmas.

WHEN your chief of the national police breaks down publicly uttering, “who can I trust?”, the enormity of the situation stares at you hard. When the president of the country cries foul and cusses left and right and wonders why we are in this state, we stare into space and ask, what has become of my country? When politicians fight, and propagate schemes to suit a desired outcome despite the state of things, we wonder, is being a narco-state just a happenstance for you? That it is not real? Are you high or on the take? Please pray tell us. For trust is earned and we can abandon you, if need be.

 

THERE is no political discourse without emotions being involved. There is no political decision without opposition. And there is no political perspective that will not be challenged by one’s opponents. What seems to be universally accepted in politics all over the world turns out to be even truer right now in the Philippines. Having observed the political landscape after the May 2016 elections closely, I see how our political discourses and cleavages have become more emotional, more aggressive, more unforgiving. Or, if you want to use fewer words: Our political culture has been poisoned.

(Delivered at the Kusog Mindanaw Conference 2016 on 29 November 2016 at the Waterfront Insular Hotel by Lito Lorenzana, Centrist Democratic Party)

Federalism is a subject matter that has occupied its Philippine advocates over the last three or four decades but has only gained traction through the candidate Duterte. A lot of us are somewhat familiar with the concept, but allow me to examine Federalism thru the prism of the people of the South – particularly people from Mindanao – where the concept is much more understood.