On Monday, our newly elected local chief executives will begin their terms in office which will last for three years. What are they to do in that span of time?
What they will do is not easy to divine. They made their promises while campaigning for the elections last May but they also have the freedom to not fulfill them. The most we can hope is that they will do the minimum required of them by the law that governs the operation of local government units (LGUs). This is the Local Government Code of 1991.
In the Philippines, LGUs are creations of the national government as provided for in our Constitution. The Local Government Code put more flesh to the intent of the Constitution with respect to LGUs. The Code declared as the policy of the State that its territorial and political subdivisions shall enjoy genuine and meaningful local autonomy to enable them to attain their fullest development as self-reliant communities and make them more effective partners in the attainment of national goals.
The key here is the last part of the stated policy for LGUs to attain their fullest development consistent with the national goals. What is our goal as a nation?
The 1991 Code did not say. In fact, many things can be said about what we want as a nation but ultimately the goal of every nation is to attain the highest level of development possible for its people measured not only in terms of higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita but also in terms of wealth that is fairly distributed to allow most of us to enjoy good health, obtain higher education, live in a decent house and freely achieve higher personal aspirations in life. Without these, our life is no better than that of beasts.
But in practical terms, how do we measure development to know in the end the performance of our local officials? There may not be agreement on this. For those living in the city, they may equate development with the building of larger and larger malls or of taller and taller skyscrapers. Those living in the countryside may look at it as the provision of new roads to make going to the farm easier or irrigation to increase productivity. I am sure you also have your own measure of what constitutes development.
Internationally, though, and realizing the inadequacy of the use of per capita gross domestic product to measure the nation’s welfare, the United Nation Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) is now being used as a standard measure to compare the levels of development achieved by each nation of the world. The HDI is a composite index which includes how far each nation of the world has improved their material well-being represented by their per capita GDP, health represented by life expectancy at birth and education represented by mean years of schooling. The closer the nation’s HDI to 1.000, the higher is its level of development. The UNDP’s 2013 Human Development Report computed the Philippines’ HDI at 0.654. That was just good enough to place the country at number 114 among 185 nations in the world being included in the study. At the top was Norway with an HDI of 0.955 followed by Australia, 0.938, United States, 0.938, the Netherlands, 0.921 and Germany, 0.920.
Using a similar method, an HDI by province is also computed in the country. The result was that in 2006 Benguet, Batanes, Cavite, Rizal and Bulacan were on top. In 2009, the top two were again Benguet and Batanes but this time followed by Rizal, Cavite and Bulacan in that order. We Cebuanos, may ask why Cebu is not in the top five when for some years now we are made to believe that we were “Number One.” That may be true but the one saying that may be using a different measure, not the HDI.
Now if only our local officials will focus on improving their performance with respect to the indicators in the HDI then we may have a concrete means to measure their success or failure while in office. More than the HDI, however, which is actually very restrictive in its scope, our local officials might also expand their horizons to achieve better life for their constituents by aligning their local development plans and targets with the Millennium Development Goals.
To recall, in September 2000, member states of the United Nations (UN) gathered at the Millennium Summit to affirm commitments towards reducing poverty and the worst forms of human deprivation. The summit adopted the UN Millennium Declaration which embodies specific targets and milestones in eliminating extreme poverty worldwide. In this declaration eight major goals and 18 specific targets were set to be accomplish by 2015. These goals and targets were finally distilled into 48 MDG indicators around which all UN members nations have committed to achieve.
We have no more space to explain the 48 MDG indicators are but suffice it to say that in the country the local government units had been charged by the national government to meet the MDGs in their areas. But none as far as I know in Cebu has made a report to their people about how they met the MDGs. Instead, what we hear are the usual litany of projects of this or that kind they started or completed. Whether these projects were really identified with due care to maximize their impact on the intended beneficiaries and implemented with little waste of resources, we do not know.
However, based on the HDI ranking, Cebu was placed at number 20 in 1997. In 2006, this went down to number 21. Data is not available for the most recent years but whatever our rank, we hope that Cebu improves it in the next three years.