Ensuring good governance

Good governance means a government run by officials, both elected and appointed, who are good leaders. Good leaders, on the other hand, are people imbued with the corresponding traits and values of competence, honesty, integrity, dedication and experience. Without these people in responsible positions of government, the country can never have a good government. The goal ideally then is not only to elect and appoint good people in government service but to elect and appoint the best people to ensure the best governance.

Under our democratic system, the process of choosing our representative leaders is through elections. The system would have been ideal if we have an electorate that would choose only the best, the brightest, the most competent, honest, dedicated, esteemed and experienced candidates. Sadly, our history of electing public officers falls short of this model as many times, if not most of the time, the winning candidates gain public office through sheer popularity and use of persuasive money. As always, then, we get the government that we deserve.

How can we ensure, or at least raise the probability and statistics, that the people elected in government positions are competent and capable, who know the best way to properly discharge the functions of their office?

The Constitution, unfortunately, does not help in attaining this paramount goal of able-leadership as it merely requires of a candidate natural-born citizenship, a minimum age level, a minimum period of domicileship and registration as a voter as qualifications for the elective position aspired for. Nothing, but nothing at all, is required by the fundamental law in the matter of ability and competence of the aspiring leader. It is illogical, to say the least, that in the very serious business of leading the entire country and people, no minimum standard at all is set as to the ability and competence of a public servant in the form of either educational attainment or experience for the job.

In stark and vivid contrast, almost all if not all other positions in government down to the lowliest clerk and janitor are required to prove their ability and competence for their position through examination called the civil service exam. In the case of an applicant for a driver’s license, even, the aspiring driver is made to undergo a written examination to test his knowledge about driving, traffic rules and regulations and road courtesy as well as an actual driving journey to test his real skill at driving before he is given a license and be allowed to actually drive at all. Yet, in the case of the post of the President of the Republic, the highest office of the land whose occupant bears the awesome responsibility of driving for 84 million Filipinos, there is no such examination to test his or her skill or knowledge for such a daunting task. How very illogical and unnatural.

It is our suggestion then, that the elective officials from the barangay councilmen, barangay captains and municipal and city mayors, provincial board members, vice-governors and governors, congressmen, senators, vice-president and, finally, the president must undergo some educational training, test and evaluation to see them fit to occupy such responsible public offices. The Comelec should be made to pre-screen and qualify all prospective candidates so that the qualified ones shall compose the pool from which the aspiring candidates can now court the approving nod of the electorate. Combined with the candidates’ reputation for honesty, dedication and integrity as well as their track record and experience from holding past public posts, the people can rest easy with the thought that only the truly worthy candidates will emerge to serve the people.

If no less an amendment to the Constitution is needed to effect such positive changes, then, do we so urge the present leadership to propose the amendments for the people to ratify. We challenge, likewise, the legislators to enact the corresponding legislation.

With respect to appointive officials, we submit that they be subjected to a similar test and evaluation to assure also that they are knowledgeable and experienced for the positions they occupy. The appointing authority must never accord undue political considerations in the process of appointing public officials as, if the sole objective is to ensure the best governance, only the best people with capability, knowledge, expertise dedication, honesty and integrity should be harnessed to serve the country and people.

An equally vital aspect of electoral reform is in the area of election spending. As discussed in our previous articles, the enormity of campaign expenses has been a source of graft and corruption on the part of the candidates who win public office. A winning candidate who spends a fortune in the hustings will invariably use the powers, influence and stature of his position to recoup his election expenses, with a profit to boot. How else can he "break-even" or make a "return on his investments?" As we can see, the seeds of graft and corruption are already planted during the election time.

How can we prevent this from happening? By preventing the planting of the ‘evil seed", in the first place. We propose, then, that corresponding legislation be passed to prohibit a candidate for public office from spending his own money to fund his campaign. At once, this will "even the playing field" among candidates by removing the undue advantage of a moneyed aspirant as against his lesser cash-endowed opponents. But more importantly, this will remove from the winning candidate any reason or motivation to recover his election expenses as he has none, to start with.

But the question arises: How will a candidate fund his campaign when he is proscribed from spending on his own? Surely, there are legitimate and necessary expenses to bankroll an honest-to-goodness campaign such as for leaflets, posters, streamers, gasoline for campaign vehicles, food for campaigners and poll watchers. The answer is the supporters.

We propose that only the supporters can financially contribute to the campaign coffers of a candidate. Even then, a campaign contributor can only donate a maximum of P5,000 for local positions, and an upper limit of P50,000 for national posts. This will obviate against the pressure on the part of the winning candidates to favor and protect the big-time contributors of his campaign, which we all know are usually the vice-lords of drugs, gambling, smuggling and prostitution. Corollarily, it would be wise to treat the donations of these ordinary citizen supporters as tax deductible. Indeed, this is the practice in the advanced and developed countries that we see no reason for us not to adopt it here.

It is our hope that these suggested electoral reforms by way of knowledge and competence tests both for our elective and appointive officials as well as a proscription against campaign spending by the candidates themselves in favor of minimal donations from ordinary and individual political supporters will go a long way in ensuring a clean and honest election and on effective, efficient and caring leadership that is graft-free. Premised on the principle that the quality of governance depends on the quality of our leaders, these proposals should be well the effort of our legislators and policy-makers to consider and implement.

You may write your comments / suggestions at 15/F Equitable Tower, Paseo de Roxas, Makati City or through e-mail at HYPERLINK "mailto:[email protected]"

(Note: We beg the indulgence of our leaders who are at times tasked to read a lengthy piece. The purpose of our writings, however, being advocacy and not merely commentary in nature, compels us to dissect a given problem, analyze its causes and effects, and offer studied solutions. The length of the article should be irrelevant to such an approach..)