Building transformative communities

What is a transformative community? Basically, it is a community where people, conscious of their objective and typically difficult history and confronting the challenges it poses for their common development, actively collaborate to make life increasingly humanized, just and democratic. In such a community, people feel not so much pity as compassion for each other and thus they actively minimize inequities victimizing the poor, the women, the cultural minorities and other marginalized sectors. An increasing number of the citizenry regularly participates in meaningful consultation, decisionmaking, policy-implementation and monitoring in the public domain as well as exacting political accountability within this transformative community. Thus one may conclude that in this community, the common language is humanism, the operational orientation is equity or social justice and the governance practice is definitively participative — involving most of the public — and not simply liberal, elite-oriented, democracy.

Are there such communities developing in the Philippines? Amidst so much despair provoked by political instability, economic recession, violent crimes and outright war in many parts of this republic, have some people found the time, energy and, most difficult of all, the requisite hopefulness to attempt reinventing their historically poor-performing communities, to reconfigure them and relocate their new foundations in the bedrock of transformational rather than traditional politics?

Surprisingly, yes. In these increasingly transformational communities, people are learning to overcome their traditional political emasculation, to organize themselves into effective political actors able to persuade or compel their local authorities towards responsive and responsible governance and to sustain an overall culture of productive collaboration between the citizenry and their public officials. Traditional patterns of exploitative client-patron relationships yield to more functional and less hierarchical modes of political interaction . Increasingly empowered citizens and their now more accountable authorities are dropping exploitative or adversarial orientations and replacing them with confidence-building, collaborative and synergistic perspectives.

The pressure towards greater political participation and effective governance comes not only from an empowered, historically alienated citizenry; it also may be initiated and is much facilitated by intelligent and democratically-oriented authorities. In Naga City, in some parts of Bohol and Benguet and perhaps a few other areas of the country, enlightened government leaders and their associates have demonstrated that the citizenry’s political empowerment does not threaten the authorities or their legitimate programs and projects; on the contrary, it increases their capabilities as public officials in servicing their lawful and proper constituencies. In these model places, the material resource base of the local government gets to be much improved because the authorities are able to access not only the formally allocated, often grossly inadequate funds of the national or local government. They can also rely on extensive material and human resources that their local constituencies entrust them — officially or unofficially — and have them use. This arrangement is possible precisely because these authorities have gained much public trust and confidence — a psychological resource so critical to successful democratic governance anywhere.

Where, unfortunately, the public officials are less than enlightened and continue with transactional mindsets that serve mainly their short-term and selfish interests, the emergence of a transformative community is much more difficult and the citizenry must wage a protracted struggle. In such a setting, people have to recognize the objective fact and the dynamics of their continuing exploitation, overcome conservative sentiments and attitudes that perpetuate this poor condition, learn alternative modes of democratic empowerment and collective action and —above all — develop strategic initiatives that enable them to confront and successfully persuade or compel the authorities to develop more progressive, transformational inclinations.

Whether the authorities be enlightened or benighted, the remarkable fact is that Filipinos have started building transformational communities in many parts of the country. Assisted or resisted by local public officials, many people are developing a critical mass that will make transformational communities an irresistible wave of the future. "Reform or perish!" has little credibility when trumpeted by national leaders whose empty rhetoric has rung too hollow across the years. When patriotic citizens quietly but firmly direct this message to themselves and their governing authorities, the likelihood that transformational communities will indeed be built and a truly strong democratic republic will truly emerge is significantly high.

In my next column, there will be space devoted to acknowledging at least four groups of people who have concerned themselves with building their own transformational communities. Through the collaboration and sponsorship of the Foundation for the Advancement of Filipino Women (FAFW), the Center for Asia Pacific Women in Politics (CAPWIP) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), these competent builders of strong, democratic communities had an occasion last weekend to interact with similarly-minded Filipinos. For two intellectually, spiritually and emotionally-challenging days, this remarkable group of about sixty people shared their collective experience and candid reflections on building transformational communities.

When the workshop ended, everyone wondered at his own transformation and realized that another transformational community had emerged (had been birthed?) in the very hotel where all had labored so hard and laughed so much as they delivered their newest creation.