“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”1
Thus, American President Theodore Roosevelt during his time delivered the preceding exposé and admonition about the United States government many years ago. This malady and wickedness in the nucleus of government are fatal to any country. Still in full force in many governments around the globe, the whole world is thus consequently, incessantly in trouble.
The Philippines is no exception. In fact in the periodic surveys on the most corrupt nations throughout the world, the Philippines has figured and has kept on climbing to top echelon.In the meantime, the morons of our inept government for their glaring incapability, will never really be able to realize or admit this, but there are quite a number of “white elephants” enshrined in the corridors of government for many years now, while others are smugly holed up in the nucleus of power serving not the people but the vested interests of a few—”the collusion between corrupt business and corrupt politics”, in the words of American President Roosevelt.
In our system of government these branches and instrumentalities are not really part of the working apparatus, but are mere props, or extraneous offices constituted by equally passing morons from 1972 to 2009 to serve their political glamour and material ends. All vanity!Already, the taxpayers are heavily overburdened by their continued “non-performance” and out-of-operation. The biggest of them all is the Department of Interior and Local Government.Needless to state, but just look into the sullen state of affairs of the August 23 hostage crisis that unnecessarily killed eight innocent human beings and that has slapped the newly installed Aquino administration with a badge of shame!.The infamy and tragedy have not only agonizingly exposed the powerlessness of DILG, and more specifically its overlapping presence amid the direct actions of the PNP and its officers, plus the overbearing acts of top officials of the City Hall of Manila, but the fiasco has put in the limelight DILG’s unnecessary hand on the crisis, all of which had been aptly evidenced by the sphinx-like entry on global TV coverage showing the peripatetic DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo taking a momentary eyeball at the blood-stained crime scene with arms akimbo, and with an expressionless face! Je-je-je! (Will you please supply this piece of advice a snapshot of that heartbreaking footage on TV of DILG Secretary Robredo with arms akimbo at the bloody crime scene instead of the hungry lions (please see front page photo) depicting the enflamed hearts of Filipino taxpayers!)
‘Tang ‘na.
Why is DILG a white elephant—the biggest of them all? Consider the following: “I’d like to run again because I don’t want City Hall to run the affairs of barangay Pacol,” thus declared Josue Perez, candidate for Punong Barangay in barangay Pacol, Naga City in the coming elections on October 25.Perez was referring to the uncalled for inroads of Naga City government into purely barangay matters such as highhanded impositions and non-stop politicking. Perez had served barangay Pacol as its barangay captain for more than 16 years. He run for city councilor in the last May elections and lost. He surely must have had sufficient experience of the beauty and efficacy of a barangay government running its own affairs and solving the problems therein as they come. His statements on decentralization and on local autonomy are definitely based from experience.“I adhere to the wisdom and intent of the Local Government Code which provides for decentralization and autonomy of local government units. I believe if decision-making and accountability are moved closer to the people of the barangays, governance will improve and our objectives will be attained faster based from our own plans through our own resolve, besides our barangay shall be saved from the claws of politics,” Perez said in this interview by station manager Joel Buena of BBS-DWLV Naga last week.
This surely is one way of saying, there’s no need of the DILG lording over local governments. At the time the Local Government Code was passed by Congress and approved in 1991, DILG has rather become a stumbling block for full decentralization and the grant of autonomy to LGUs.The country is already swamped to the edge of collapse by the over-centralized, overglamorized and over-aggrandized politics sweeping completely the archipelago, for even the 15 to 17-year old youth, called SKs, have not been spared. ’Tang ’na!The DILG is at the center of all this colossal monstrous malevolence. Remember erstwhile DILG Secretary Ronaldo Puno, who was at the same time head of the administration political party, the architect and think-tank of the ruin of the Gloria Arroyo administration? Remember how the operations of his office had squandered millions of taxpayers’ money through the DILG and through the same political machinery of the Arroyo administration? Their likes compose the morons of this inept government. We propose to use the word “morons” to refer to people in the seats of power who CAN THINK OF NOTHING but the glamour of politics and their material ends. ’Tang ’na. They are morons, no doubt, because they CAN NOT THINK NORMALLY, that public office is a public trust; they are morons because they have made a big joke of their oaths of office by which they are asked to make SACRIFICE FOR PUBLIC GOOD, yes sacrifice for public good, not for their own! ’Tang ’na!
To make sure that the basic tenets of democracy—sovereignty of the people, and governance and taxation through representation—are fully adhered to, the framers of the Local Government Code had safely guarded that duly elected local officials and their respective powers and function are not usurped by mere appointed ones, like those manning the DILG. It is downright unimaginable if not despicable to find an appointed DILG official issuing orders upon duly elected officials in municipal and barangay levels. The Code so provides: “Article One, Section 25. National Supervision over Local Government Units. - (a) Consistent with the basic policy on local autonomy, the President shall exercise general supervision over local government units to ensure that their acts are within the scope of their prescribed powers and functions.
“The President shall exercise supervisory authority directly over provinces, highly urbanized cities, and independent component cities; through the province with respect to component cities and municipalities; and through the city and municipality with respect to barangays.” (Underscorings supplied).
Moreover, in just one instance did the Code invoke engaging the DILG, but on police matters. It said: “Article Two, Section 28. - Powers of Local Chief Executives over the Units of the Philippine National Police. - The extent of operational supervision and control of local chief executives over the police force, fire protection unit, and jail management personnel assigned in their respective jurisdictions shall be governed by the provisions of Republic Act Numbered Sixty-nine hundred seventy-five (R.A. No. 6975), otherwise known as "The Department of the Interior and Local Government Act of 1990", and the rules and regulations issued pursuant thereto.” Even on police matters, the DILG is a square peg on a round hole—a misnomer. What is the whole PNP force doing to be lorded over the DILG people who have no inkling on the bare-bones and back-breaking workout of police work? We find the whole thing a duplication of functions if not overlapping of responsibilities.
On top of this structure, we have a National Police Commission acting as the most immediate overall authority on police matters.
Indeed, life is short. Life is wonderful. The earth is just amazing and our country is beautiful. This was not the way we have begun to live on this planet some fifty years ago. A lot of changes have taken place. Some were wonderful, but many have gone from their miserable state to worse. Rivers have become murky, if they did not run dry. The mountains denuded, and the seas no longer abound with bountiful catch. The weather and climate have gone to extreme conditions that affect agricultural and industrial pursuits. Our long quest for good and honest government has remained a dream. We are forced to write this way if only to prove that we still try with our pen to prove its might over the sword; to prove to our children and grandchildren that we continue to hope and dream to bequeath to them not this inept government but one which we can be so proud of. Frankly, sometimes, we disliked writing anymore biting criticisms enflamed like the crucible. We like to go back to writing poems. At one time, we wrote one and gave it to the late Senator Edmundo B. Cea. He loved it, framed it and hang the poem inside his office at the old Batasang Pambansa in 1985 before the first Edsa People Power Revolution. The poem reads this way:
I fear the sun burying itself
Deep into the abyss at dusk.
Oh, if it couldn’t climb back
To make another dawn!
Sun, sun!
Call it up, Sun!
Remember sweet old day?
The changing rhythm
of the waves of the sea?
Remember the flushing glow of dawn,
The changing patterns of cumulous clouds?
Oh, if it couldn’t climb back
To make another dawn!
Sun! Call it up, Sun!
O, night.
How could I love thee night!
—30—
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