Despite my reservations and misgivings about local development planning conferences, I did not hesitate to join the Dec. 1-3 seminar-workshop titled Basics of Comprehensive Development Plan and Executive-Legislative Agenda Formulation, a training on abridged local planning processes and tools.
The workshop was made possible with the facilitation of the Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas and a Dumaguete-based NGO, St. Catherine Family Helper Project Inc. headed by former Bantayan Barangay Capt. Albert Aquino.
While I have doubts regarding the usefulness of conducting comprehensive development planning sessions, I came to the workshop not just because of my desire to learn but also because the endeavor was a clear manifestation of an attempt to put order to the current bedlam which typifies local planning in the Philippines.
This muddled state owes in part to the persistence of pre-devolution practices, and likewise, the failure to carry out to their full realization the provisions of the Local Government Code on local planning.
As to why I have misgivings, it is because of the reality that mayors only have three years to prove themselves, and implement their plans. If the public does not give them a second term, the plans they have painstakingly devised and laid out may all turn out for naught because the next local chief executive will surely have his own plans and his own pet projects.
However, the three-day workshop highlighted one aspect of comprehensive development planning — participatory — which I think, if implemented fully or followed religiously, can help local governance, and provide the solution to countless public service issues that besiege Philippine communities, and simultaneously relieve the frustrations of many public servants and citizens.
Basically, the primary objectives of participatory planning are to provide the people with the opportunity to have a say in the development decisions that may affect them, and to make sure that interventions are suitable for the needs and inclinations of the population they are intended to assist.
The way I have experienced it, the benefits of participatory development planning include 1) strengthened voice especially for the poor and marginalized segments of society; 2) better informed plans; 3) reinforced capacity of citizens; 4) fortified capacity of governments; 5) better understanding between different stakeholder groups; 6) enhanced transparency and accountability; and 7) strengthened democracy.
Nobody can deny the benefits that participatory planning can do, and I will never deny the advantage of having comprehensive development plans, however, knowing the erratic and capricious nature of many politicians, I cannot help but wonder if these plans will really work out.
Call me jaded or a cynic but I have been there-done that.
While I myself am not a politician, let’s face it, I have spent a good number of my professional life talking with/eating out/cavorting with politicians and pseudo-public servants and civil servants kuno. I am well aware that by hook or by crook, they will always insert their own priorities and projects.
Thus, I am very concerned that after painstaking effort in drafting a comprehensive development plan, some mayors would just throw it out the window.
Despite these apprehensions though, I commend Prof. Ernesto Serote for his book Rationalized Local Planning System, written and published in 2008 with the NGOs involved in that training-workshop.
If everything goes as planned — representatives of the municipalities/cities who joined the seminar will assert themselves in crafting a genuine CDP in their respective places — then I guess real progress and democracy will come to us in due time.
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Author’s email: wea_129@yahoo.com
