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By Arnold S. Tenorio
, Assistant Business Editor
Conclusion
BABES Tesiorna became anxious when told she need
not take part in consultations on the new Medium-Term
Philippine Development Plan.
It was September, and the government already had
a working draft.
One of 14 civil-society representatives to the
interagency National Antipoverty Commission, Tesiorna felt she owes
it to her constituency—the country’s informal workers—to lobby
for the insertion of their concerns in the government’s new
economic blueprint.
Upset about their exclusion, she and fellow
basic sector representatives wrote to Socioeconomic Planning
Secretary Romulo Neri, asking that they be included in drafting the
MTPDP.
Nothing came out of that letter—not even the
courtesy of a written response—so in an October meeting with
Imelda Nicolas, the newly appointed chair of the National Antipoverty
Commission (NAPC), the group demanded that its concerns be
incorporated in the plan.
The National Economic and Development Authority,
which is tasked to draft the MTPDP, relented, and soon
Tesiorna’s proposals, and those of fellow civil-society leaders,
were sought for inclusion in the new blueprint.
That the 14 NAPC sector representatives met with
resistance from a government that supposedly welcomed their
partnership in its antipoverty campaign says a lot about the quality
of consultations done on the MTPDP.
Indeed, of the shortcomings raised about the
plan, the process it went through has generated the most
controversy.
Tesiorna recalls that the planning under
President Estrada and during the first term of President Arroyo took
longer than what happened for the latest plan.
“During Estrada’s time, each basic sector
representative was sent an invitation,” she said.
Although no invitation was sent out during the
first term of President Arroyo, Tesiorna’s group, Kakasaha, wrote
Neri’s predecessor at NEDA, Dante Canlas, who obliged and welcomed
her group’s participation in drawing up the plan.
Cutting corners for a new plan
Sources privy to the drafting of the new MTPDP
admit that the government cut corners to come up with its latest
economic plan, thus the three-month record in pulling together the
final draft.
Past governments took about six months to draw up a medium-term
plan.
Ponciano Intal, a former NEDA deputy director general who now
teaches economics at De La Salle University, said a steering
committee composed of personalities from the government, business,
academe and civil society was put together to oversee the draft.
Separate planning committees that similarly enjoyed participation
from the private sector drafted the plan’s chapters, each of which
was oriented toward a sector-based concern, such as agriculture or
labor.
Past planning also benefited from the inputs derived from regional
consultations organized by NEDA, Intal said.
This process ensured the plan would reflect the concerns of all
sectors of society as well as the needs of the country’s
geographic units.
After the consultations, the steering committee endorsed the draft
plan to the President for his approval.
In the case of the new MTPDP, President Arroyo gave NEDA 100 days to
finish the new economic blueprint.
Thus, regional consultations were dropped altogether, which is
ironic because the plan states that the government has to be more
attentive “to the needs of people in the rural areas and cultural
communities.”
Chapter 25 on Constitutional Reforms even proposes a “change from
the present centralized unitary system to a decentralized federal
system” to “challenge and energize local governments and
cultural communities to effectively deal with local poverty,
unemployment, inadequate social services and infrastructure, and
lower productivity.”
As for the “planning committees,” the government didn’t bother
organizing new ones, and instead tapped interagency bodies.
Each interagency body doubled as a technical working group, with a
NEDA unit assigned to it as secretariat.
Only one planning committee, the Interagency Committee on
Agriculture, was created.
Instead of a single steering committee, three Cabinet clusters
supervised the work of the interagency bodies under them.
Limited role for private sector’s part
Except for three interagency bodies that have
nongovernment partners, the rest of the “planning committees”
suffered from the limited participation of the private sector.
By limited participation is meant that either the committee had only
a sprinkling of private-sector participants—all invited by NEDA—or
nongovernment participation was constrained in some way.
The new Interagency Committee on Agriculture, for example, had a
nominally large number of nongovernment participants, including six
from academe, four from business and four from civil society.
But one of them, Cielito Habito, a former NEDA director general who
now teaches economics at the Ateneo de Manila University, recalls
having attended only one of two consultations held by the
Interagency Committee on Agriculture.
Fr. Francis Lucas is listed among the four civil-society
participants, but he denies receiving any invitation, much less
attending any of the consultations.
His organization, the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and
Rural Development, was instead handed sometime in September a draft,
comments on which were sought by NEDA.
Jovelyn Cleofe, who chairs the NGOs for Fisheries Reform (NFR), was
invited to just two consultations of the interagency committee.
But in the first meeting, the government spent half a day discussing
its past accomplishments; in the second it was peddling a ready
draft of the plan.
Cleofe hasn’t heard from NEDA since.
Sources agreed that consultations were conducted, but whether these
were done properly is arguable.
”It all depends on how you define consultation,” a source said.
“If it’s a matter of just presenting people a finished draft,
then I guess there was consultation. But if consultation means
giving them enough time to study the draft and give their comments,
then the government rushed the whole process.”
He said that from the start, NEDA was hesitant about including
civil-society representatives on the committees because “they
might prolong the meetings.”
Interestingly, the private sector wasn’t brought into a committee
that handled the chapter on proposed amendments to the Constitution
(Table 5).
For its part, NEDA denies it kept the private sector in the dark,
saying it “has involved several people and groups from academe and
the private sector.”
How broad representation to the committee was is, however,
questionable, considering that NEDA’s “academe” and “private
sector” comprised two state-run learning institutions and the
Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines.
This oversight is worrisome, since constitutional change has been a
very contentious issue.
Past attempts by the government to jump-start Charter change met
with strong opposition from private sectors, primarily civil-society
groups.
Among the groups not invited to the recent planning were past
participants that have very strong views on Charter change—the
Caucus of Development Nongovernment Organizations, the Makati
Business Club and the country’s trade unions.
CODE-NGO, for one, used to sit on the steering committee that
endorsed the medium-term plan during President Arroyo’s first
term.
Asked why his group wasn’t consulted, its executive director, Joel
Pagsanjan, said: “We don’t know if it’s deliberate, but [the
government] was obviously rushing [the plan].”
Even those nongovernment groups invited to take part in drafting the
MTPDP felt excluded from the discussion on Charter change.
Kakasaha’s Tesiorna, for example, has strong views about fiddling
with the Constitution.
But like many other planning participants who were vaguely aware of
some Charter-change issues, she couldn’t delve more deeply into
the proposals, since she was being rushed to comment on her assigned
topics.
Indeed, civil-society groups have raised the alarm about a newfound
“development aggression” on the part of the government.
They cite, for example, the lack of consultation on Malacañang’s
decision to reorganize the Department of Agrarian Reform into the
Department of Land Reform.
Pagsanjan said civil society is hoping “this is not the beginning
of a dangerous trend.”
NEDA disputes such a trend exists, insisting the President’s
consultations with CODE-NGO among other groups during her first term
already form part of government’s institutional memory, which has
been incorporated in the new economic blueprint.
Full significance of consultation
The government, however, doesn’t seem to
realize the full significance of conducting consultations, laments
Alex Brillantes, dean of the University of the Philippines National
College of Public Administration and Governance.
Brillantes said the proposal to shift to a federal structure as
contained in the MTPDP chapter on Constitutional Reform may help the
national government reduce its deficit while encouraging local
governments to develop new sources of funding.
”But serious research must be done [on the costs and benefits of a
shift],” he said, before the government can undertake
constitutional reform, whose inclusion in the MTDPD is a first.
“It’s something you cannot fast-track. It’s something that has
to be understood by the people.”
In this regard, the government may have missed a golden opportunity
when it reduced the process for drafting its new economic blueprint.
”In the consultation process, you consult not only to get inputs
but, more important, to get stakeholders to rally behind the
plan,” Brillantes said. “It’s double-edged. So during the
implementation people will say that is our plan. And that is the
whole rationale for serious consultation.”
Indeed, a test of a plan’s simplicity is whether people who will
be affected understand the plan enough to talk about it and, more
important, act on it.
NFR’s Cleofe, however, doesn’t feel like vouching for the new
MTPDP.
Comparing the new blueprint with the fisherfolk sector’s agenda
for reform, she finds little resemblance between the two.
This is unfortunate because as chair of a coalition of the biggest
fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines, Cleofe could have drawn
in a critical mass of support that the government sorely needs.
Faced with the prospect of nonviable plan brought about by
Congress’s reluctance to provide enough financial muscle, Neri has
begun to rally other people to back the government’s new economic
blueprint.
Over the past two weeks, he has signed a covenant with the
Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which has agreed to
back the plan, while one of his deputies recently addressed a
meeting of local chief executives to get similar support.
But critics say Neri has it all wrong, as the two groups, which took
part in drafting the new MTDPD, need no convincing.
Neri, according to them, is preaching to the converted.
NEDA insiders say their director general can’t do otherwise, since
he’s faced with a dilemma.
A source put it this way: “How does he persuade people he ignored
in the first place to support his plan?”
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