The Philippine Online Chronicles

If you are anything like me, you would be deliberating ever so carefully – even at this very moment -- on who to vote for president and vice president. You would also be taking time and effort to identify the best senatoriables, choosing perhaps from a well-prepared short list. By the time May comes, you would have made more or less confident choices on whose names to write when you enter the election precinct you are assigned to.

If you are anything like me, you would have also made clear-cut choices on your bet for mayor and governor, vice mayor and vice governor. And yes, very likely, you would have decided long before election day who you want to be your congressman too, including the special groups worthy of representation in the House under the party-list system.

But let me ask you – do you get stumped, like me, when you reach the lower end of the ballot? I mean the spaces where we have to write down our candidates for the provincial board and the city and municipal councils.

I have to confess, embarrassed and abashed, to slip-shoddy voting at the local government level, especially in the category of councilors and board members. For me, it is always eeny-meeny-miney-moe. What about you?

One election day years ago, I simply wrote down the names of all female candidates, on the premise that women are usually under-represented in enclaves of power. Another time, I left all the spaces blank and never mind if I squandered my voting rights or part of it. Sometimes, a name would ring familiar no matter how vaguely and I would write it down, knowing very little or not at all about the person’s qualifications.

Let’s face it, the ordinary voter takes local government voting for granted. We scarcely take the time and effort to know the candidates and make informed choices at this level of voting.

We forget that the provincial board and city and municipal councils are where the decisions closest to home and family and community are made. They are our local “senators and congressmen," in a manner of speaking.

The provincial board, for example, passes laws for the welfare of the municipalities and cities within its jurisdiction, prepares and approves the provincial budget, appropriates money for provincial purposes, exercises the power of eminent domain, and provides for the maintenance of equipment and buildings.

On the other hand, the city council levies and collects taxes, enacts ordinances, provides for public works constructions, maintains a local police force, establishes fire zones and regulates types of buildings that may be constructed within each zone, and provides for the protection of the constituents from public calamities as well as relief in times of emergency.

With the increasing decentralization or devolution of government services, more and more responsibilities are laid on the doors of the local government unit.

Under Republic Act No.7160, otherwise known as the Local Government Code of 1991, local government units are mandated to exercise more powers, duties, and resources to become self-reliant in responding to the needs of the community. Among basic services devolved were for agriculture extension, forest management, health services, township/barangay roads, and social welfare.

We need competent and dedicated men and women to provide good local governance. We need honest and upstanding officials in city and municipal halls, for graft and corruption have become endemic too at the lower echelons of government. It makes a lot of sense to choose them well.

Marikina used to be a dying town until Bayani Fernando and his team of councilors revived and transformed it into a model Local Government Unit (LGU). Roberto Pagdanganan and his men pulled a similar feat in the province of Bulacan. There are other case stories, some of them documented, of local governance that have saved places from gloom and made them into boom towns, cities, and provinces.

Unfortunately, most other LGUs have little capability of fulfilling their growing mandate. Some units are so economically underdeveloped and poorly governed they simply have no means to deliver expected services.

How do we get to know local candidates, then? How, yes, how?! -- when they have little or no presence in television, newspapers, radio, and other national media?

This is the question I am hard put to answer.

Perhaps we can make it a point to gather all materials we can about them that we can get hold of. Read the campaign leaflets distributed from door to door. Get out to meet and talk to them when they make the rounds of the neighborhood. Attend campaign meetings if possible. Consult our more politically savvy neighbors. Anything -- just so we won’t be looking for coins to toss when we fill out that lower end of the ballot.

Beyond these limp little measures, would you have your own suggestions?

Photos by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado. Some Rights Reserved.

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