Decision making in government

Reflections from Paseo de Coro

Governance is about making a decision and how that decision is done. But what kind of decisions are made? For what purpose are they made? How are these decisions arrived at? Who has the final say as to what those decisions should be? How are the decisions carried out? What are the results?

Finally, any decision, when carried out, involves the use of scarce financial resources. How prudent are our decision makers in the use of public money?

In an ideal environment, government decisions are made mainly for the purpose of promoting the greater good. We may not agree what that greater good is, but when pursued by an elected government, this is usually found in the platform of government presented by the winning party or politician during election at the applicable level from the national down to the local level for which the party or the politician was voted for. The danger as I pointed out previously here is that some decisions are really made for the good of the few when such few powerful groups capture the decision making of the government.

In the present contest for the highest position of the land, Mar Roxas is presenting a platform of government that is premised on the continuity of the gains achieved in the economy by the present administration that now bear fruits in the form of faster GDP growth than in the past several decades, leading to higher per capita income and reduction in unemployment rate which, although recognized by keen observers of progress and development both here and abroad, is not fully appreciated yet by some people in the country simply because of the enormous number that still remain unemployed or underemployed and the high poverty incidence that we still see in the country.

Rody Duterte’s centerpiece program is to eradicate crimes that he firmly believes to be the greatest menace of our people, although I still fail to see not only how he would do it in six months as he promised but also how would crime eradication, if indeed possible, would translate into the greater good in terms of overall improvement of the well-being of our people. Grace Poe promises a good mix of programs to carry out which also makes it harder to see how she would achieve their objectives at the same time especially that she has not really fully explained how the various problems or areas of concerns that she is addressing are related that would have helped her to clear which of them should be addressed first or given priority.

Never mind Jejomar Binay who promises to stop corruption but who himself is accused of massive corruption when he was still mayor of the premier city of the country, or Madame Defensor who is actually sick and therefore lacks the energy to focus on any development issues that she would pursue as she presently has not done anything about except to respond on the issues of the day.

More than the formulation of the development vision and setting of priorities, however, governance is seen more also by the day-to-day decisions of the government to translate the vision and priorities into actionable programs and projects, including certain decisions that need to be acted upon immediately in response to a crisis or emerging critical development issues.

How are these decisions made in Congress when the required policy action must be supported by an enabling law, inside Malacañang when day-to-day executive decisions must be made for some policy actions to be approved or carried out immediately, in the various instrumentalities of the national government that are assigned to pursue the different programs and projects of the national government, or at the local level where elected officials are expected to be more informed of the real issues facing our people and directly in contact with them?

In other words, how participative and transparent is the process of decision making in government? And are the decision makers armed with the necessary information to make a good decision in favor of one action or the other? These questions are important, more particularly that of the need for necessary information upon which a decision has to be based.

We have seen, for example, how the President vetoed the proposed P2,000 across-the-board increase in the monthly pension of SSS retired members for the reason that when Congress approved the proposal, the staggering amount required for the additional monthly pension was not well considered.

The President believed that the proposed increase was not affordable without any corresponding measures to increase the SSS revenues or contribution from its existing members.

We heard so much of the required system of participatory decision making at the local level as embodied in the Local Government Code when it required the private sector and civil society to become members of the local development councils. Among other things, the council decides what programs and projects to be included in the annual investment program which must be inputted into the preparation of the local government budget.

However, how the system actually works and how effective are the non-government members in their participation remains to be known. Note, for example, that after 25 years of passing the Local Government Code, we still find many local government units struggling to develop or failing to show any improvement of their respective areas after being given more resources and power to implement a wide scope of programs and projects to improve the well-being of their own people.