Best Practices in Philippine Politics: Among Ed’s Accounting to Pampanga

photo from the PCIJ

Eddie “Among Ed” Ton­gol Panlilio is a Fil­ipino Roman Catholic priest who was elected as the 26^th gov­er­nor of Pam­panga. He was sus­pended from his priestly min­istry upon announc­ing his inten­tion to run as gov­er­nor. He is the sec­ond priest to be elected to pub­lic office in the philip­pines, the first being Fr. Mar­gar­ito Gon­zaga, who was elected mayor of Albur­querque, Bohol in 1971.

He was inau­gu­rated as the 26^th gov­er­nor of the province of Pam­panga on June 30, 2007. Dur­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion, the new gov­er­nor vowed to stop cor­rup­tion and to make the province an exam­ple of a “new dawn in Philip­pine politics”.

Among Ed began serv­ing his term amid the province’s hope to erase its rep­u­ta­tion of being the country’s Vat­i­can of “jueteng” or ille­gal gam­bling. Pam­panga has had a long his­tory of patron­age pol­i­tics and cor­rup­tion. One of Panlilio’s achieve­ments in office was to increase the province’s rev­enue from quarry taxes.

On Jan­u­ary 13, 2008, Panilio was named (20 votes, over Chief Jus­tice Rey­nato Puno, 15 votes), the Philip­pine Daily Inquirer “Fil­ipino of the Year 2007″. Panlilio strug­gles with the 3 Rs of no-holds-barred Pam­panga polit­i­cal resis­tance: recount (polit­i­cal protest by his oppo­nents), recall (peti­tion) and requiem (death threats).

City of San Fer­nando — Gov­er­nor Eddie T. Panlilio deliv­ered his State of the Province at the Benigno S. Aquino Hall to mark his 2^nd Anniver­sary as the Gov­er­nor of the Province of Pam­panga. Dubbed as “Kad­wang Pamamie Kwenta King Provin­cia”, his report was heard by dif­fer­ent heads of regional agen­cies, reli­gious and non-government organizations.

In his speech, the Gov­er­nor thanked all the men and women who were behind the amaz­ing achieve­ments of the Provin­cial Gov­ern­ment. All these accom­plish­ments would not have been pos­si­ble with­out their ded­i­ca­tion and hard work. More­over, the syn­ergy (PAMISAUPAN) which the Panlilio Admin­is­tra­tion espouses has con­tributed greatly to the effec­tive deliv­ery of basic ser­vices to the people.

The gov­er­nor ended his mes­sage with a sum­mon and invi­ta­tion to all stake­hold­ers to become united since much remains to be done to alle­vi­ate poverty,generate jobs, improve liv­ing stan­dards and widen access to edu­ca­tion, health care, food secu­rity, and shelter.

I hope that more gov­ern­ment offi­cials can fol­low his example–to be more account­able and trans­par­ent to their con­stituents, to advo­cate against cor­rup­tion in their own spheres of influ­ence and to bring in a new dawn of Philip­pine pol­i­tics. It can be done. It is pos­si­ble. There is hope.

An Account­ing for the Province
EDDIE T. PANLILIO
On the occa­sion of his 2^nd Anniver­sary as Gov­er­nor of the Province of Pam­panga
June 30, 2009

Let me begin by thank­ing all of you for your pres­ence today. But more than your pres­ence, we thank you for your sup­port in work­ing with us to keep our province steadily mov­ing for­ward. The growth and devel­op­ment of Pam­panga can not be sus­tained with­out the com­mit­ment and indus­try of provin­cial employ­ees in part­ner­ship with other local gov­ern­ment units and civil soci­ety groups.

The past year was again another very try­ing year for us, given the recall-resign move against me ini­ti­ated by our rabid crit­ics as well as the other chal­lenges that came our way dur­ing the last sev­eral months. Notwith­stand­ing these polit­i­cal storms, we chose not to be dis­tracted as our deter­mined bid and relent­less efforts have scored impres­sive gains and reaped huge div­i­dends for our people.

Our quarry rev­enues over the past 24 months have scaled unpar­alled heights as we col­lected more than Php413 Mil­lion dur­ing the sub­ject period. The dra­matic 300% increase in quarry fees has earned for the provin­cial gov­ern­ment the Gawad Gal­ing Pook Award 2008 in the field of rev­enue col­lec­tion. As of May 31, 2009, munic­i­pal and barangay quarry shares have reached Php138 Mil­lion. This is indeed a huge wind­fall that would go a long way in meet­ing the essen­tial needs of the con­cerned communities.

Our Pamisaupan Car­a­van remains active as ever, deliv­er­ing var­i­ous social ser­vices such as free medical/dental check-up and treat­ment, skills train­ing, sup­ple­men­tal feed­ing, and a lot more to 31 barangays since its incep­tion in August 21, 2007 in Sagrada, Masan­tol, Pam­panga. More than 52,000 of our con­stituents in more than 31 barangays of the dif­fer­ent munic­i­pal­i­ties ben­e­fited from these services.

• Free medical/dental check-up to more than 17,499 patients;
• Filmshowing/bookreading to more than 3,994 chil­dren
• Employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to more than 1,161 job­seek­ers
• Liveli­hood train­ings and capa­bil­ity build­ing to more than 771 entre­prenuers
• Anti-flu/pneumonia vac­ci­na­tion to more than 1,150 elder­lies
• Anti-rabies vac­ci­na­tion to more than 3,986 dogs
• Seeds dis­tri­b­u­tion to more than 4,215 house­holds, and so on.

The very essence of these Pamisaupan Car­a­vans is the fact that we brought to the Capi­tol to the hearts and minds of our peo­ple and they too were able to tell us their con­cerns. To the dif­fer­ent depart­ment heads and capi­tol employ­ees who gladly served our cabalens, I thank you.

I am also proud to report that we have invested Php232M for infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment. Roads, canals, gov­ern­ment facil­i­ties, pub­lic schools and hos­pi­tals and cov­ered courts were paved, con­creted, repaired and con­structed. I wish to empha­size that these projects were built with­out the add-on cost of SOP. I repeat, wala pong komisyon dito. And for this, let me thank our engi­neers and the mem­bers of the Bids and Awards Com­mit­tee who mon­i­tor their proper implementation.

Dur­ing my last year’s report to you, I said that we would fine tune our flag­ship pro­gram, HEAL which stands for Health, Edu­ca­tion And Liveli­hood for our needy con­stituents. For this pur­pose, we have pro­vided more than Php31.5 Mil­lion for pub­lic health pro­grams, allo­cated more than Php26.5 Mil­lion for sup­ple­men­tal feed­ing and have served more than 10,000 under­nour­ished school chil­dren so far. Php92.77 Mil­lion was also allot­ted to other mar­gin­al­ized sec­tors such as senior cit­i­zens, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, youth, and indige­nous peo­ple and more so to our indi­gent con­stituents for their health and other press­ing needs.

More­over, we have allo­cated Php22 Mil­lion for Phil­health cards, of which more than 10,711 per­sons have ben­e­fited in response to their press­ing med­ical needs. We have given pri­or­ity to barangay health work­ers and barangay tan­ods as ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this pro­gram. Accord­ingly, our efforts was rec­og­nized by Phil­health in the 6^th Gen­eral Assem­bly Phil­health Gov­er­nors Forum.

In the area of edu­ca­tion, we con­tinue to dis­trib­ute var­i­ous con­struc­tion mate­ri­als for the improve­ment or repair of dilap­i­dated school build­ings through our CPM office. The Pamiad­uan­gan 57–75 pro­gram which aims to raise the qual­ity of edu­ca­tion in the province con­tin­ues. Php1 Mil­lion was allo­cated as seed money for this project, not to men­tion the other assis­tance we are giv­ing to our school­child­ren. And for this, we would like to extend our warmest appre­ci­a­tion to Holy Angel Uni­ver­sity and our other part­ner institutions.

For those of you who fre­quent the 2^nd floor of the provin­cial capi­tol, you must have noticed dur­ing the past few months the crowd of stu­dents wait­ing out­side the Provin­cial Administrator’s Office. They are the 7,940 recip­i­ents of finan­cial edu­ca­tional assis­tance being granted to bright but indi­gent col­lege stu­dents in our province.

Last sum­mer, in line with our Spe­cial Pro­gram for the Employ­ment of Stu­dents (SPES) in part­ner­ship with the Depart­ment of Labor and Employ­ment, our stu­dents were granted sum­mer jobs. Aside from their help to the dif­fer­ent munic­i­pal­i­ties and to the capi­tol, the infor­ma­tion they have gath­ered will pave the way for a skills reg­istry where job­seek­ers could look for job open­ings here. These will also be listed in the Phil Jobs Net, a national insti­tu­tion where employ­ers look for their needed work­ers. At present, we have pro­vided Php3 Mil­lion assis­tance to 955 sum­mer stu­dent work­ers for the dif­fer­ent munic­i­pal­i­ties of the province.

In the same man­ner, we together with Pam­panga Agri­cul­tural Col­lege will enter into a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment to sup­port fully one-hundred of our indi­gent but bright stu­dents. Most of them are chil­dren of our farmers.

For the agri­cul­ture and aqua­cul­ture sec­tors, it is only now that provin­cial funds were allo­cated. We have allot­ted Php41.9 Mil­lion in order to increase our pro­duc­tion in rice, veg­eta­bles, at var­i­ous fishes and give assis­tance to our farm­ers and fisherfolks.

In the mat­ter of liveli­hood, our Aku ing Bayung Entre­pre­neur (ABE) pro­gram has so far assisted 1,230 entre­pre­neurs, pro­vid­ing Php6.15 Mil­lion for micro financ­ing. The coop­er­a­tive move­ment in the province has gained more strength and has, in fact, been con­ferred the best Coop­er­a­tive Devel­op­ment Award dur­ing the 1^st Regional Coop­er­a­tive Con­gress held in Olon­gapo City .

Ladies and gen­tle­men, these are only some of the ongo­ing pro­grams and projects which have been imple­mented by the provin­cial admin­is­tra­tion in the last two years. There are many more that need men­tion­ing but time con­straints and the lim­ited atten­tion span of our audi­ence pre­vent me from enu­mer­at­ing all of our accom­plish­ments here.

While a few of our friends in media say that this is all form, amount­ing to lit­tle substance—particularly the cre­ation and con­ven­ing of more than 30 dif­fer­ent boards, coun­cils and com­mit­tees which have remained dor­mant over the years—I say this is an impor­tant and inte­gral part of our advo­cacy towards respon­sive and con­sul­ta­tive gov­er­nance. The undis­putable sta­tis­ti­cal data speak for itself.

Our aspi­ra­tion to per­sist on imple­ment­ing these pro­grams have rad­i­cally the way of doing things at the capi­tol (where dis­ci­pline was instilled), in quarry oper­a­tion (where pro­ce­dures were put in place in secur­ing per­mit and truck accred­i­ta­tion), and in the repair and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and gov­ern­ment facil­i­ties under the Pamisaupan concept.

As con­tentious as the issues that con­tinue to con­front us today, we must remain on our toes to meet the most press­ing chal­lenges. Much is still needed to be done to alle­vi­ate poverty, gen­er­ate jobs, improve liv­ing stan­dards and widen access to edu­ca­tion, health care, food secu­rity and shelter.

Thus, dur­ing the past sev­eral months, we have laid down sev­eral strate­gies in order to gen­er­ate addi­tional income for the province, such as:

a. the revi­sion of all exist­ing tax ordi­nances;
b. gen­eral revi­sion and tax map­ping along with the inte­grated tax admin­is­tra­tion sys­tem;
c. mak­ing the PEO com­pound free and avail­able for com­mer­cial use; and
d. reha­bil­i­ta­tion and devel­op­ment of the San Matias property.

But fore­most to that, we have to be aggres­sive in mak­ing the fol­low­ing projects a reality:

a. the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Macario Arnedo park;
b. con­struc­tion of new build­ings for ENRO, PEO, PSWDO, OPA, and VET and/or the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of exist­ing ones;
c. pro­vi­sion of top-of-the-line med­ical equip­ment and addi­tional funds for drugs and med­i­cines and med­ical and lab­o­ra­tory sup­plies for our nine dis­tricts and one provin­cial hos­pi­tals;
d. repair and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of all offices at the capi­tol build­ing; and
e. the con­struc­tion of an envi­ron­men­tal recov­ery and waste facility.

This is not to men­tion the repair and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of all provin­cial roads and bridges as well as the repair and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of munic­i­pal and barangay roads, schools, barangay halls and day care cen­ters, for which we shall pro­vide funds amount­ing to more than Php350M.

In the past two years, we took the lead in clean­ing up, nor only the sys­tem but also the struc­ture of gov­er­nance. We are bring­ing jus­tice to our peo­ple by fil­ing charges against erring offi­cials of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions for the malver­sa­tion of at least Php568 Mil­lion from quarry col­lec­tions. We will filed charges against the con­trac­tor of the botched com­put­er­i­za­tion project of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. This is not to men­tion the charges we have filed to some provin­cial gov­ern­ment employ­ees for their vio­la­tions of their sworn duties as civil servants.

These are chal­leng­ing times. We can­not afford to lose hope and faith in one another. Our peo­ple expect much from us. We vowed to this responsibility.

I pray that it will not take a major upheaval for us to unite as Kapam­pan­gans. There is much room for col­lab­o­ra­tion right here and right now. I am there­fore invit­ing all stake­hold­ers in our province, spe­cially our part­ners in the Sang­gu­ni­ang Pan­lalaw­igan, to stand for a com­mon pur­pose. My appeal for sup­port and coop­er­a­tion does not come with­out my being cog­nizant of the need to respect the right of the august body to respon­si­bly fis­cal­ize and oppose my admin­is­tra­tion on mat­ters of prin­ci­ple and pol­icy or hon­est dif­fer­ences of opin­ion. We are all seated in the same boat. We have no other choice but to pull together, to row in one direc­tion and in uni­son to reach our des­ti­na­tion faster. Instead of find­ing fault, let us find ways to help and encour­age one another. Instead of con­demn­ing, let us seek to rem­edy and build on the gains that were started.

In clos­ing, I express my appre­ci­a­tion to all provin­cial gov­ern­ment employ­ees, the name­less, face­less work­ers, who have bestowed upon the province the bounty of their labors. My sin­cer­est grat­i­tude to all for your dili­gence and hard work.

Lastly, may I invoke the bless­ings of the Almighty God upon us all. Hail the breed of Pampanguenos.