From the Ground Up

Thursday, 30 June 2011 05:36

Written by Louie C. Montemar

“In tyranny lies only failure, you build a country like you build a cathedral, from the ground up!” blared Russell Crowe’s Robinhood in the 2010 Hollywood-version of that popular folktale.

What this line echoes is not merely a reductionist nor mechanical metaphor in politics and development. To my mind, there is hope and a very real need out there for building “from the ground up.”

I am reminded of this line as I read this morning about the DILG Sec. Robredo trying to allay local executives’ distress about a Commission on Audit report, “which caused worries and confusion among local chief executives” after it indicated that 182 LGUs’ usage of a specific share of their funds “did not contribute to the socio-economic and environmental development of their localities.”

Some vignettes also came vividly back to my mind after reading the news.

In 1994, in Bicol, as I led a seminar-workshop on non-formal education, a Barangay Kagawad shared a fascinatingly graphic description of how corruption occurs down the line, as it were. That local Pilosopong Tasyo told us, in fine Filipino (take note, not in Bicolano, albeit that official grew up in Bicol and never studied formally outside of Bicol): “In this country, Corruption comes to pass the way one fetches water using a leaking pail and with several pail bearers. From the national agencies, down to the local offices and barangays, the pail leaks. Each pail bearer at each level of the bureaucracy and governance gets his share—each drop that leaks—para sa dimonyo. Funds for the local communities may start out as a pail of water but end up being received as a mere shot-glassful. Is that the so-called trickle down effect, Sir?”

Sarcasm trickled but indeed, there are many times that I have learned more from passionate “students” like this. This quaint and curious metaphor came way before PNoy posited his Matuwid na daan line to sell anti-corruption as the top governance agenda.

Sometime in 2002, in Lumban in Laguna, while conducting a discussion on local development and planning with members of a fisherfolk organization, one ordinary member of said group quipped in response to one of my statements, in elegant Filipino: “Sir, we have been told before that development work and empowerment is more than giving a person a fish, and that they are more about teaching individuals how to fish. But today, what can we do? We have given more than fish to those who are needy. We have tried teaching and learning more about fishing. But now we need to do more. For how can we fish when the fishing grounds are depleted, when mother nature weeps and the spirit of the lake wanes?”

Those certainly were no simplistic words from a simpleton. I was given a magnificent lesson in sustainable development, way before Clinton croaked worldwide, in 2006, of an Inconvenient Truth through the glitter of Hollywood.

Around 2004, after a meeting with some barangay officials for their project with La Salle, someone shared with me an enlightening anecdote about a Barangay Kagawad in Manila who marched into the Barangay Bureau of Manila City Hall to complain about his Barangay Chairperson (Yes, Virginia, it’s not Captain despite what one moniker of a certain showbiz celebrity-politician suggests—last I checked, we are not under Military-Colonial government anymore). The distraught man wanted to file an official complaint because, as he claimed, he was not being given his rightful share of the barangay “SOP”.

As former national treasurer and UP Professor Liling Briones has pointed out, “S.O.P.”—which, as many know, is an acronym for standard operating procedures — stands for corruption in the language of Philippine bureaucracy “implying that corruption is a built-in feature of government operations.”

That Barangay Kagawad’s brave buffoonery bespeaks of built-in debauchery. A grievous sign of the abnormal becoming the norm.

After two-and-a-half EDSA uprisings, both monsters and men of mettle remain out there. One needs active immersion in the development arena to discern these two types of creatures, especially at the local level. One locked inside her little world will not be able to easily distinguish between the two. But they are out there.

Of course, it is with “men” (pardon the sexist language) that we side, for meaningful social change, for sustainable development.

And take side we should.

Social change, however, is never neat, unfortunately. But it happens, is happening and will continue to happen—with us, because of us, or despite us. And—as most of the time it certainly trickles down—it may also flow up.

The stories I’ve shared here are among many which should remind us of how we must build this country. Like a cathedral. From the ground up!