LMP Cebu to lobby for greater local autonomy

Tuburan Mayor and outgoing LMP Cebu president Democrito Diamante turns over gavel to Liloan Mayor and incoming LMP Cebu president Christina Garcia Frasco. | Irene R. Sino Cruz

CEBU CITY, Philipppines — The League of Municipalities of the Philippines Cebu chapter (LMP Cebu) will actively pursue a stronger local autonomy.

LMP Cebu President and Liloan Mayor Christina Frasco made this statement during her acceptance speech following her election as LMP Cebu president.

Read more: Frasco is League of Municipalities of the Philippines Cebu’s first female president

Frasco emphasized the need for local chief executives to work together to reach solutions for challenges they would face.

She noted that the LMP Cebu chapter has an important role to play in local governance. 

“We can see that the LMP has a huge potential to help us mayors to make it a potent resource to help provide guidance as we fulfill our responsibilities,” the mayor said.

“As mayors we all face the same challenges: to ensure that our people are educated; that we have a good health system that they can rely upon; and a good social welfare system in addition to a reliable public infrastructure,” Frasco said.

While LMP Cebu comprises of 44 members, she said that the local executives seemed to face the challenges on their own.

“That should change. This league of municipalities should be a place where all of us can exchange ideas, exchange battle scars and stories, and be able to help each other in finding solutions to challenges that we commonly face,” Frasco said.

She said that LMP Cebu could further strengthen local autonomy by making the organization ‘policy-driven and advocacy-driven.’

“With 44 mayors united in the call for decentralization and the call for strengthening our local autonomy. I feel that we will be able to make an impact not only on the provincial level but also on the national scale, especially when it comes to legislation,” the LMP president said.

LMP Cebu’s advocacies would include looking into the provisions in the Local Government Code, which are either due for revision or strict implementation, Frasco said.

“We can make sure that we add value to the local economy and improve the provisions in Local Government Code,” she said. “I feel that as one chapter, we will be able to obtain benefits for individual municipalities and contribute to the development of the province of Cebu.”

According to Frasco, LMP Cebu will consult with the mayors to identify the challenges and to come up, as a group, with solutions that they will present to relevant bodies, either the provincial government or the national government.

“What we can do as well is to further the interest of our municipalities to make the LMP a strong lobbying force for advocacies and policies,” the mayor said. “So, it will be a policy-driven LMP that will seek to establish its voice in the province and national level as far as effecting the necessary changes in legislation that will further strengthen the local autonomy.”

Initially, LMP Cebu advocacies will include addressing the overlapping of functions between local government units and national government agencies, which can be resolved through better coordination.

“Secondly, I will personally lobby for all our mayors to fully support the administration of Governor Gwen Garcia, knowing her goals to improve the performance of all municipalities,” Frasco said.

She also plans to bring LMP to the digital age by setting up a website and the creation of an app or application that would become a resource for mayors, where the local executives could get information such as relevant Commission on Audit resolutions./dbs