The 2013 midterm elections now over, the victorious candidates are probably thinking how best to implement their development-oriented plans when they buckle down to work in their positions.
Local officials’ terms are only three years – not really that long, but still long enough to be able to make some difference in the community. But first, a round of congratulations is in order: with the elections becoming more levelly-played and clean, orderly and credible, our local society is moving forward to having the kind of governance and community affairs that Dumaguete City and its Gentle People surely deserve.
The people have gently spoken – and those elected are now firmly in the spotlight, their performance being anticipated and watched with interest.
Public service is a noble vocation; it becomes ignoble when its practice is not what the people have the right to expect.
Public officials and civil servants become such because they have capabilities to provide the kind of public service that benefits the public interests and responds to the public’s basic needs – and thus be accordingly remunerated.
Elected public officials court the public’s trust and confidence to parlay such mandate into programs of governance that serve and advance the public interests/general welfare.
In short, good public service = public good/progress and development.
Public servants are, therefore, ruled by two simple virtues: honesty and integrity. The difference between these two may be stated in an equally simple way – honesty: what one thinks and what one says is the same (no conflict or contradiction); integrity: what one says and what one does is consistent.
The many other rules and regulations of public life, like the basic Mosaic Law (i.e., Ten Commandments) added to by the elders of Israel over time, are what may be called “the spice of life”.
A judicious use and proper application of such “spices” is needed for public service to remain straight and true to the course – while also achieving aims and objectives peculiar to the leadership personality and style of the officials concerned that are over and beyond what are normally expected or required as public service.
This translates to whether or not they become popular and well-loved for their tenure of public office.
Otherwise, come the next round of elections, they will fail to obtain the people’s vote of confidence to stay in office.
However, governance which is in the center of the public arena and scrutiny is as much a complex balance of conflicting perspectives as it is a mundane day-to-day management of public resources, assets and services dedicated to the maintenance of public order and general welfare. In other words, it’s also a perceptions management challenge.
Public officials, especially elected officials, are always careful to cultivate the proper public image, maintain suitable lifestyles, and are able to project authority and power on the basis of their competence and track record of performance. Thus, public leadership is synonymous with leadership by example.
In a place like Dumaguete, where people are generally more aware and conscious of what’s currently happening in the community, there can be no other way to cut it. In the bar of public opinion, perceptions are everything.
Development – the raison d’íªtre of governance, aside from basic social services provision and maintenance of security, peace and order – is the other challenge (apart from the perceptions management challenge) that tends to give government, both local and national, a lot of fits and grief.
This is simply because the development challenge that all our government officials now face has become a gargantuan undertaking: characterized by runaway poverty, booming population growth, socioeconomic inequity, insufficient food security, inadequate tax revenues, environmental degradation, periodic calamities and disasters, rising crime incidence – the list goes on and on.
It’s almost like a mission: impossible kind of thing; but unlike in the movie, in reality the government’s ability to cope with such issues and problems is more of a ‘catch-as-catch-can’ rather than any kind of decisive triumph. Regardless of any election period promises made, we have to remember that – always, reality is less than the promise.
When we look at the general state of development in our country, we often wonder if we’ll ever get to see “the light at the end of the tunnel”. Sometimes it all seems absurd – just like Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, which tells of the struggle of Sisyphus, condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.
This absurdity seems familiar in our development undertakings. As Camus suggests, to break the cycle we have to revolt against it, which is to say that we have to ‘rebel’ against our own faults and shortcomings – a promising start on the journey towards real development. Not doing anything about it, or merely feigning solutions that keep “rolling back down” to failure will be the absurdity that will just keep on happening to us.
But, of course, our local public officials will do all they can to appropriately respond to the development challenge – in the name of and for the sake of the Gentle People of Dumaguete. That’s why we’re congratulating them, and wishing them the best in their jobs.
Certainly, they can’t be faulted when they do their utmost best to address the mostly-intractable problems of development. Not that we’re prematurely judging them, but a realistic and sober outlook is infinitely better than ‘jabbing at the moon’ type of wishful thinking.
In any case, they’ve got their work cut out for them – that much is obvious. And when we think of the reasons why we voted them into office in the first place, it only means that we’re also part of the equation, after all.
What our local officials must be wishing for at this point is that hopefully, the people will also be part of the solution – and not part of the problem. Then we all can advance together toward resolutely and effectively resolving these pesky development problems – perhaps once and for all (if that’s not too much to ask for).
Let’s all hope for the best – but also should stand ready to help and cooperate with our local officials, so that they can serve us as best as they possibly can. It’s a two-way street; governance and development – you can’t have one without the other, and the two-way street is how governance functions relative to the people it serves. It either leads to development, or nowhere.
But we take heart in the knowledge and belief that our elected local officials are good people – just like the Gentle People they represent!
