Participative Planning and Budgeting

It would be good to note how Social Watch Philippines—an internationally-recognized NGO committed to increasing people’s awareness and participation in social development concerns with government, continues to beam the watchful eye on the P-Noy administration, especially in terms of prudent government budgeting and fund use. Social Watch is an umbrella organization of 40 NGOs in the country.

Social Watch Philippines leads the roster of NGOs who continue to respond to the challenge of equipping the people with ways to participate and assert intelligently their advocacies within the mandated and lawful structure of participative governance.

The organization had established a reputation of being a most vocal critic of the Arroyo government’s penchant for ‘impounding’ budget; funds that could have boosted the country’s development competitiveness if it were released in time. The bad news is, a good size of these funds reportedly  never saw light. Social Watch claims the worse and suspects they were used for things other than what they were intended for; a dilemma President Noynoy so graphically narrated in his recent SONA.

Unfortunately, we see in many local chief executives (LCE) a tendency to downplay the role of the sectors in the budget processes, which is emphasized by the Local Government Code to serve a singular objective—people participation in planning and budgeting for the LGU.

I believe it is folly to ignore what people, represented by sectoral leaders, NGOs and People’s Organizations, have to say about development priorities and how LGUs allot money for these priorities. The Code specifically calls for due consultation with development stakeholders, represented in the Local Development Council and other bodies organized for this purpose. To break this simple protocol is an affront to the very spirit and essence of the Code and the people empowerment it guarantees.