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Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
For a long time in Philippine development experience, cooperation in the development terrain was largely a market-state synergy. Only in the 1980s did the NGOs and peoples’ organizations or POs sprout in large numbers to leverage their strength and engage the state in the development game.
As a budding development professional and technocrat in the early 1980s, I encountered a context with few NGOs if ever in my area of operations (Cagayan Valley/Region II, Northern Philippines). It was Martial Law, independent NGOs/POs were regarded with suspicion as communist fronts (we have a Left insurgency here), and so it was tough looking for ‘civil society’ groups to co-partner with in the development game, most specially in development planning.
When the provincial development councils were mandated to be installed as planning & coordination platforms, I had the luck of sitting in some of them as convenor and top advisor. But alas! There were not much ‘independent’ NGOs/POs to invite as participants, save for ‘agrarian reform’ and peasant groups that were constituted by barangay officials and mayors that were not, in fact, ‘independent’ or ‘autonomous’.
Good enough for the market players, as chambers of commerce already abound then across the archipelago. So during my watch as convenor, I immediately invited the local chambers to sit along with us state officlals who came from both local and national government agencies.
So that was the arrangement I had than at the provincial council. And the experience was fulfilling so far. The market players were participative, they actively presented ideas regarding process and priority programs and projects for the province. It was not difficult engaging them, as I recall well.
Another strategy that was employed by my broader them then, led by our regional director, was to form a club of government and business executives in the region. We called it the ‘Valley Kilusan Executive Greenhouse Club’ or Valley KEG Club. In the first semester of 1983 I was luckily appointed the manager of the clubhouse (located in Ilagan, Isabela), which I executed on top of my other regular tasks.
The response to the invitation for club membership was simply very enthusiastic. During my incumbency as manager, there were over 100 members which included traders, provincial governors, regional directors & provincial heads of line agencies, and cottage industry owners.
Our sub-regional office in Ilagan (Isabela) housed the clubhouse that was specially designed and constructed for the purpose of R & R of executives in the region. We had a restaurant and some function rooms, including a games room that was under construction (it was done when I left the ministry for graduate school later).
Every now and then we invited entertainers from Manila, who were contracted to perform for about a week or so. One entertainer decided to stay for good, as he found the business opportunities in the valley so great for exploration and immersion. The restaurant alone, which was packed with exec audiences at times, was already a good venue to build goodwill and good faith among development partners.
At daytime, some business and government officials would come to take lunch, hold meetings there, or simply chat and exchange pleasantries. The warlord governor then (now deceased) of Isabela, who also chaired the Regional Development Council, would come occasionally to meet people and exchange pleasantries.
Both the formal and informal platforms for concurring synergy are effective, as far as my experience had shown. Explore all possibilities for dialogue, this is the thumb rule. If one may not work fairly well, then explore the other strategy. Should both of them work well, then indeed this would brighten your day, and this is possible.
[Writ 29 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne D. Argonza
[Writ 04 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Good afternoon! Food be with you! (Hmmm that’s to borrow from Christian’s ‘peace’ maxim…)
You may wonder how we stakeholders of development do our coordination here in the Philippines, and I’d say coordination is practically the same everywhere. It involves ‘partnering’, an unraveling of distrust and a sincere effort to cooperate and collaborate. Partnering eventually creates strong institutions, thus catalyzing development further.
I was just a 23-year old enterprise supervisor in the defunct Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS) in 1982, when news came out that development councils will be constituted at the regional level. It used to be part of partnering mechanisms at the regional level, with the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) serving as secretariat, till it floundered and slept in the late 1970s.
When the regional development council or RDC woke up again, circa 1982, the MHS was already making waves in the development arena. This agency was eventually mandated to revive the council, in collaboration with the NEDA and all provincial governors. I remember then that the charismatic and management-savvy Governor Faustino Dy of Isabela was elected 1st chair of the revived RDC, with Area Manager (regional director) Tito Osias of MHS serving as convenor.
Down the hierarchy of power and influence the provincial development councils or PDCs were also constituted. I had the luck then of representing the MHS to begin building the PDC core in Batanes, the same core being the members of the KKK Secretariat (KKK = Kilusang Kabuhayan at Kaunlaran or National Livelihood Movement, a major state funding program for enterprise) then emerging. My provincial and deputy bosses, who was almost always out of the region (their families were in Manila), mandated me to be the lead convenor for the core building of both bodies.
It was a fruitful work to begin with, the task in Batanes. State and business representatives were invited to comprise the core, down the mayor’s level. Civil society was weak here then, there were no developmental NGOs to invite here then, so it was purely a state-market synergy we had there in Basco (capital town). Within just three (3) months of consultations, our coordination outputs were simply enormous, the targets could overwhelm a single agency if it were left alone to implement them. But with many partners to achieve the goals, including modernizing the pier and acquiring a ship dedicated for Batanes alone (the islands were practically isolated from the ‘mainland’ Luzon), development goals are optimistically achievable.
Acquiring the experience I needed for my next task, Cagayan, I then moved to add inputs to a PDC core plan that was already begun then before I occupied my Tuguegarao office (capital town). Because there was a provincial manager-designate, and my post was just recently upped to deputy provincial manager, my first tasks were to travel to different towns and subtly convince the mayors and line agency partners at that level about the need for development coordination at the provincial level. That ‘massaging’ had to be done, because mayors were reportedly luke warm about the idea of a PDC.
After three (3) months on the job, my provincial manager was sadly sacked from duty, and so I had to take over as Acting Provincial Manager. Then did I do the convenor tasks at its core, with Governor Cortez role-playing PDC chair. Mr. Bagasao, provincial head of the Ministry of Local Governments (MLG), was co-convenor. There was no NEDA office at the provincial level, so the MHS-MLG-Governor’s Office served as lead implementers of the council. I myself prepared the agenda for all succeeding meetings.
It was quite tough a work there, I recall. Cagayan was quite large a territory to navigate, state officials and business groups too many to manage, but we did make headway in forming the active core. State officials could hardly see each other eye to eye at local levels, but there they were in the council, forging inter-agency linkages as semblances of ‘committee work’ of a gigantic cooperative. Sadly, the mayors were absentee, and this almost piqued me at some point to the extent that, warlord-like, I would challenge those pretentiously all-knowing absent mayors to some war games to show them I was serious in the job.
But again, like the Batanes narrative, the Cagayan experience was largely a state-market synergy, with nary a developmental NGO to invite. What we did then was to invite peasant and fisherfolk groups, which were largely enterprise-group types, but that was the best remedy then for the absence of NGOs there. (Contrast this to today’s Cagayan where dozens of developmental NGOs are in operation.) We set the rules of engagement, built interagency teams, ironed out convergences among state agencies’ plans, got inputs from the chamber of commerce and dealers’ groups, and then conceptualized new projects. Among those new projects during my watch was the industrial estate in Sta. Ana (today’s CEZA).
It was an altogether fulfilling experience for me then as a budding technocrat. I loved every bit of the job. Walls among state officials were broken down, cooperation gelled, new bold and ambitious projects were identified, existing ones were fast-tracked (irrigation, electrification, public works, enterprise finance, food sector development). It was beautiful!
Sadly, I had to leave that work, as I needed to go back to my schooling: to the University of the Philippines where I longed to take up my masters degree in sociology. I simply monitored the ensuing institutionalization efforts for the councils…till later, I heard about the constitution of municipal and barangay (village) development councils. That’s partnering at work, and mind you, it surely works if you put your heart and mind into it. It brightens up the world a bit.
Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Hello, dear readers! A sunny day to you all!
I thought all the while that we had only one world on Earth, since we have only one planet. I wish to believe, even as I refuse to hear some alternative versions otherwise, that we are One World, One Planet!
In the 1970s, as I was studying sociology at the premier university in the Philippines, I encountered the 3-Worlds theories for the first time. Brilliant in their expositions, the theories converged on the idea that the planet’s nations are divided into the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd worlds.
Following from the same theories, whether the UN-initiated or the Maoist version, my country supposedly belongs to the 3rd world, this being agrarian-dominated and backward. On the other hand , the advanced industrial economies of the north—the USA and USSR per Mao’s contention, the USA and OECD countries per UN theory—represented the 1st world. Sandwiched in between are developing countries that were dubbed as 2nd world.
By the 1990s, as globalization’s march was heading onwards in powerful tsunamis, it was clear that the 3-worlds theories were crumbling. No longer capable of holding water for long, as the newly-industrializing countries were reaching their zeneath, the theories crumbled.
Globalization made even greater strides around the years 1998-2001. The aegis of borderless economies was in, those of walled or ‘iron curtain’ realities was out. We were all headed towards a one-world reality, as international institutions have been emerging that ushered intensifying cross-border cooperation and collaborations.
Judging by the way that the ‘ borderless discourse’ has been accelerating each year, effecting powerful dents on erstwhile indestructible walled worlds of the older aegis, it won’t be long when a planetary government will also arise. This will cap so many epochs of struggles by humanity to unify and think as a single human family and probably put an end to wars and conflicts among nations.
Today I believe, and this reality I see increasing by the day, that there are two (2) worlds. One is the world gravitating around the ‘Light workers’, a world of hope amid a mindset of positive-optimistic-constructive or POC world outlook. The other one is a world gravitating around ‘Dark workers’, a world of despair and doom, a world founded on negative-pessimistic-destructive or NPD world outlook.
The first world, which I will label as BrightWorld, comprises of a huge web led by POC resonators and their enthusiasts among the folks. The other world, which I will label as DarkWorld, comprises of an equally huge web led by NPD Pied Pipers and their followers among the folks.
The two worlds actually intermesh. Within any given context, the two worlds are almost certainly represented. This reality of intermeshing has semblance to what St. Augustine cogitated then, about a ‘city of man’ and a ‘city of God’. And today I understand Augustine much better.
So be it that we have two worlds, that the clash between these worlds is as real as breathing air every day. I’m very optimistic that, given a little more time, the balance in fellowship will be more towards the BrightWorld as folks get tired of excessive gloom, doom, despair and what have you.
Let the BrightWorld shine and claim its true heritage among you all, sons and daughters of the Sun!
[Writ 03 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
FIND LIGHT & PEACE IN BRO. ERLE ARGONZA’S BLOGS
Gracious Day to all friends, partners in development, fellows in the Path!
You’re all invited to relish moments of Light-seeking reflections, call to relevant actions and self-development thoughts with me, through my blogs:
Development, Economics, Better World: http://unladtau.wordpress.com
Seekers’ Lessons, Freethought, Yoga, Self-Development:
http://erleargonza.blogspot.com, http://raefdargon.mysticblogs.com
Poetry for Inspirational Living: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com
Happy Reading!
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza / Guru Ra Efdargon
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