Good governance defined

THE REVEREND Governor Eddie T. Panlilio – his rabid fanatics’ warped minds should be disabused – is not the man who popularized the tenets – not “tenants” as stupidly press released – of good governance. He is simply the man who mouths “good governance.”
Just because Panlilio’s byword is “good governance” does not mean he is the paladin of it.
Just as one swallow does not a summer make, so mere word does not good governance beget.
So, it was during Panlilio’s watch that the quarry revenues soar to the high heavens. So he is already the embodiment of good governance? To his myrmidons called local (un)civil society, unarguably. But not to the rest of the thinking, discerning people of this province, not excluding Madame Lolita Hizon and her Conscience bloc, Rene Romero et al, and, of course, Que sio, Que tal.
The honest – sorry, I don’t believe it was miraculous – collection and accounting of the quarry revenues is a component of good governance, yes. To make it the be-all and end-all of good governance is making a short shrift of that virtue.
Other than the improved collection of quarry taxes, what has Panlilio wrought for the people of Pampanga?
Of the 71 funded projects in the second half of 2007, one – and only one – the rehabilitation of the Romana Pangan District Hospital was bid out, and has since commenced. That was revealed at the Panlilio-sangguniang panlalawigan dialogue yet.
By this time, how many na kaya? With the all-too-rigorous-standards in project planning and bidding, it is safe to assume that many of the 70 projects on-stream have remained in that state of limbo.
It is great to see the millions of pesos that pour almost daily into the capitol coffers. But of what value are these millions if they remain there?
Money is not an end by itself. Even our Christian tradition holds that. So money, even saved, means nothing. For money earns its value only in its usefulness.
In good governance, that usefulness is in the service of the people.
Which leads us to the man who best defines good governance hereabouts. Why, it’s no other than Mayor Oscar Samson Rodriguez of the City of San Fernando.
Had Oca his own rah-rah boys, his transformation of the city coffers – from near-empty to almost bottomless – would have been hailed as nothing short of “miraculous.”
But Oca has no need for chorus boys. His deeds speaking for themselves. The legal doctrine of res ipsa loquitur incarnated here.
Where the capitol vainly attempts to bring down from the clouds its Ateneo-crafted agenda for governance, Oca has long been pursuing – and fulfilling – the city’s development agenda for the Fernandino.
Where the capitol heavily relies on its twin towers of – forgive me my dear Sonia Soto – cli_oral arrogance, Oca has long put in place the working, achieving Multi-Sectoral Governance Council.
All the achievements of the city in Oca’s term, splendidly tremendous as they were, would have meant less without the declaration of the City of San Fernando as “Proficient” and now on the road to “Institutionalized” in the most stringent standards of measurement of the Public Governance System of the most prestigious Institute for Solidarity in Asia. For that is the very stamp of good governance.
Oca is the personification of his own article of faith: Magsilbi Tamu. By that, Oca is good governance defined.
All others who arrogated that term unto themselves are no more than usurpers or pretenders.