One-M

By Churchill Aguilar

MY stints with the League of Municipalities and the League of Cities in the Philippines as a facilitator of some 14 batches of orientations for the newly elected mayors at different parts of the country have made my hands so full that I hardly have time to sit down and write my take on the pressing issues that beset our city and our country today. I therefore regret missing out on my regular column.

As of this writing, I am in Manila facilitating the fourth batch of new mayors. I may as well share with you what transpires on this course. Since 2007, the League of Municipalities in the Philippines launched the Orientation for Newly Elected Mayors (One-M) where they are invited on a three-day convention and they listen and interact with champion mayors who share their secrets of success. There had been other similar programs of other agencies but One-M was the only one that has sustained over the years. In fact was the only one recognized by the World Bank as the most effective framework in orienting new local chief executives simply because it is anchored on the principle of learning from their peers who have walked the talk.

As I was listening to the talk of the multi-awarded mayors, I have noticed three common denominators they all share. These are:

1. Innovations – all of them somehow did more than what was required. They all started with complying on the national mandates of their responsibilities but all their breakthroughs were due to the added innovations they implored. Part of their innovations was the development of new models of project management that were tailor-fitted to their culture. It goes without saying that all of them bank on effective management as the key to delivering quality outputs and eventual outcomes.

2. Community engagement – all of them were soliciting buy-ins from multi-stakeholders. None of the champion mayors ever claimed that they did their programs all by themselves. Breakthroughs are therefore community efforts. The greater challenge then of leadership is how to synergize the sectors into helping the government carry the burden of growth and development.

3. Revenue generation – all of them were not dependent on the national budget allocated to their cities and municipalities (IRA). They all engaged in public enterprises where they have significantly increased their local income thereby empowering themselves to provide for better social services. They also insisted on collecting the correct taxes that are due to the municipality.

All in all, the mentoring of multi-awarded mayors with the newly elected mayors has clearly painted that local governance is both a science and an art. It is a science in a sense that efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved through an established pattern and procedures. We do not have to re-invent the wheel to be effective. However, it is also an art because the breakthroughs of local governance greatly rely on how a leader tailor-fits management with their unique context and in that case there is no hard and fast rule as to how things get done.

My engagements with LMP and LCP gave me a new found respect for the bureaucracy. At the height of all the corruption issues that beset our country, there is still a ray of hope for good governance and that hope lies in the local government units.