Wasting tax money is not good governance

Last Tuesday was a special day for me and a few close friends, namely, Jose Soberano, Engr. Roger Lim, Rene Kintanar, Winglip Chang and Eric Ng and Associate Fellow Mariano Taboada of CEBECO III as we were installed as “Fellows” in a historic installation at the Blu on top of the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel by the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) for taking and eventually passing the ICD’s Professional Directors Program (PDP) which was held in the first week of August 2010. It was the first time that the ICD held this program outside Manila. While we’re not the first Cebuanos who are now Fellows in ICD, we were the first to take it in Cebu and consequently the first to be installed also in Cebu. It’s always nice to be a pioneering spirit.

As of this writing, the second batch of potential ICD Fellows are on their last day taking the PDP with ICD also in Marco Polo Hotel. It was indeed an emotional moment after all; ICD President J.J. Moreno “grilled” us in our oral exams which followed our written dissertations on what members of the Board of Directors should learn about Good Governance and more importantly, what it can do not just to our respective corporations, but for the country as well. The eminent, Dr. Jess Estanislao, Chairman of ICD gave a short but empathic talk, giving us the task to represent the ICD in Cebu… and pushing for Good Governance one director at a time or one corporation at a time.

Dr. Estanislao also pointed out the three “E’s” in Good Governance: Education, Examination, Experience and Ethics, qualities that make a person better than most when they become board members not necessarily with family corporations, Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs) or publicly-listed corporations, but even with non-stock, non-profit corporations like your Village Subdivision, where Good Governance is the key to make things work for the betterment of the community. Kudos to the ICD for their forward-looking in having the ICD PDP done in Cebu, which makes it easier for the people from Mindanao and the Visayas to attend.

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Speaking of good governance, it’s about time that the Aquino Administration wakes up to the reality that giving away cash to the poor will not make them well-off, it will not even move them out of that vicious cycle of poverty, but it would certainly make the Philippine government poorer. Yes, I’m referring to the plan by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to spend from P4 billion to P21 billion for its “dole-out” program. Above all, it would let the poor people continue having their “mendicant” mentality. Why work when the government would feed them anyway? If you ask me, wasting money is not good governance!

Surely in his readings, Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III must have come up with that old Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. But teach a man how to fish and he would be able to feed himself for a lifetime.” I can think of a million projects that Php 21 Billion can buy to help improve the Philippine economy… or if you plunked that entire sum, I would like to believe that it would be more than enough to finally reach the unreachable goal of the Department of Education (DepEd) to hire enough teachers and build enough classrooms to help educate our people.

If you ask me, another way of using Php 21 Billion is for PNoy to initiate a massive urban redevelopment program that would target squatter colonies, not just in Metro Manila, but also in Metro Cebu. Target a particular squatter colony and build high rise apartment dwellings for the poor and sell the other available land to realty developers. If he does this, PNoy would forever change the face of Metro Manila and Metro Cebu.

Mind you, this happened in Hong Kong and Singapore which were once filled with ghettos until their governments embarked on a massive urban redevelopment and made sure that no shanties would ever be built anywhere in their cities. Doing so doesn’t waste the money for they can tap the people living in those squatter areas to work for the high rise apartments that they would live in. This is undoubtedly a more workable plan than the DSWD’s dole-out program where the Php 21 Billion will simply vanish into thin air. This suggestion is our way of helping PNoy win his war against poverty… but the question is does he listen to good advice? I’m not sure he does.

Incidentally in the Senate front, Senate Majority floor leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto a week ago expressed his opposition to the Aquino government’s plan to allocate P880 million for family planning, specifically for the purchase of artificial means of contraceptives. Senator Franklin Drilon did not deny this question by Sen. Sotto and rightly pointed out that doing so is in direct violation of the Philippine Constitution which recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. Again we ask why are we wasting so much money? 

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