Government must first of all govern

Filipinos have to be decisively convinced that their authorities can and do govern. So desperate is their need for this assurance that the usual imperatives of democratic governance – protecting fundamental human rights and observing procedural correctness – may appear to them to be less important now. The strident public cry is for fast, effective and enduring results in critical areas where the authorities are seen to be feckless or, at best, inconsistent and low-level performers.

Public safety is one such area. Across the years, people in this country have suffered from the inability of government to secure their person and their material properties. Close to four out of ten adult Filipinos regularly fear being victimized by criminals while walking the streets of their own neighborhood, or even simply staying in the presumed safety of their own homes. Their actual encounters with crime – largely unreported for various reasons including lack of confidence in the authorities’ willingness and ability to curb crime – and numerous enough to dispel the suspicion that most Filipinos are simply neurotic or paranoid subjects.

The particular case of the Abu Sayyaf kidnapping people for ransom, hostaging and often brutally beheading their victims in the process of extracting blood money for their release, has so outraged the citizenry that the complete extirpation of this criminal group is demanded by the public. In Pulse Asia’s nationwide survey of June 2001, 70 percent of those interviewed – a nationally representative sample of adults 18 years old and above – identified the Abu Sayyaf as the most serious national security threat, way ahead of the CPP-NPA, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) or the Revolutionary Proletariat Army-Alex Boncayao Brigade (RPP-ABB). Using military and/or police force to crush the Abu Sayyaf group was the preferred response of 64 percent of those interviewed when asked what the government can best do in handling the Abu Sayyaf challenge.

Beyond public safety issues, Filipinos also are much concerned with government graft and corruption, the widespread sale and use of illegal drugs, the effective and non-discriminatory or selective implementation of the laws as well as other matters which relate to rapid national economic recovery and the reduction of massive poverty nationwide.

In all of these urgent national issues, government action attended by quick and dramatic results are now demanded by an increasingly impatient public. While a strategic sense of long-term economic growth and political democratization must continue to guide the authorities, it would not be amiss to focus public attention on short-term policies and programs which assure the public that their authorities do govern and that the benefits of governance may be properly assessed with a relatively short period, say a year or less starting now.

Some possibilities suggest themselves immediately. Corrupt government officials could be summarily suspended and rigorously investigated within the year. Their trial and conviction could take longer, but the public would already have a reassuring sense of the administration’s seriousness in bringing such officials to justice. Legislation to prevent tactical delays by resourceful lawyers and unprincipled judges would go a long way in facilitating these trials.

Criminality can be drastically reduced within a year if the actual perpetrators and their equally guilty protectors were also summarily dealt with, the first with methods that might severely test the very limits which human rights groups demand to be observed, and the second – the influential protectors of criminals – through extensive public exposure by specially empowered, ad hoc government investigative committees, media groups with extensive experience in investigating and monitoring crimes and other crime-focused civil society organizations.

Even exasperating vehicular traffic invites a show of decisiveness by the authorities. Once arrested, errant drivers and their vehicles may simply be physically detained in a large fenced area where they have to stay put for four to six hours. No other penalty is meted to them other than this physical detention. Except for benches, some drinking water and of course basic toilet facilities, they will not be allowed any other privilege at public expense. They may buy food and drinks – rent umbrellas should it rain – from privately-run stalls within the compound. Paperwork for their arrest would be limited to the minimum listing of their names, their particular offense and the date, time and place where it was committed. Fines do not even have to be collected from the detainees. (Those tasked with implementing this system will be rigorously monitored for collusion with those arrested. Anyone caught subverting the system is summarily dealt with. Severance from the service with forfeiture of all government benefits and additional incarceration may be needed to keep the system implementors from going wrong.)

There are other possibilities for visible, dramatic and effective governance. In all of the possible systems which government may consider putting up towards this end, it is necessary to make the systems run as simply and automatically as possible, to reduce external intervention and official discretion to zero and to cut down public expense for system maintenance to the barest minimum. Failing to do this, government’s attempted solution may turn out to be far worse than the problem it is supposed to solve. The Philippines unfortunately has a long tradition in this kind of policy or program "solution".