Measures of governance (Or, why not a measure of stink, too?) - CHASING THE WIND by Felipe B. Miranda

Citizens are often bombarded by official statistics purporting to reflect the current status of many national concerns and government’s score in managing specific areas of responsibilities in a given society. The operational assumption behind the collection of these "statistics" – literally figures relating to the concerns of the state and its management – is that any vital national concern is worth monitoring and what is worth monitoring is also worth measuring.

Thus, various official reports chart the nation’s economic conditions – often on a quarterly basis – tracking gross/per capita national and domestic economic productivity, sectoral performance, trade magnitudes and direction, investment flows, price movements (particularly inflation) and labor force utilization (employment, underemployment and unemployment), among others.

Additionally, one encounters government statistics on the status of public finance like the national budget, revenues collected, expenses incurred, actual and anticipated national deficits, the character, extent and servicing of public debt and, at the level of local government units, their legal internal revenue allotments.

One can access government figures on practically all of the customary social indicators such as the nation’s demographic composition, its rate and patterns of growth, and profiles of dependency, among others. People’s health and morbidity, their nutritional status, educational profile and other general population concerns are also regularly monitored.

There are figures on public safety which estimate the volume and incidence rate of crimes which occur with sufficient regularity as to be called "index crimes", the effective ratio of policemen – even soldiers and security or "blue" guards – to the population and the relative costs of securing citizens against "criminal elements" who threaten public safety and those with a more clearly politically subversive agenda and are national security threats to a society’s public order.

Numerous political statistics exist on the dynamic operation of the citizen’s voting behavior. Voter registration, voter turnout and electoral preferences are standard statistics in the Philippines as in other countries. These figures are collected by the Commission on Elections and are aggregated at national and local levels down to the basic barangay/precinct unit.

Continuing this review, one can run through several more pages of societal concerns regularly monitored by the government and its various agencies. On account of the impressively large compendium of official statistical information, one would think that in this country anything worth monitoring is already being monitored and systematically assessed.

This thought is illusory. No regular, daily public monitor of the garbage situation in Metro Manila is readily available. Neither the general public nor the smaller groups of concerned citizens can expect hard information indicative of whether the garbage crisis is being managed well or is simply being left to Mother Nature’s resolution.

Yet, the growing mountains of evidence in various parts of the metropolis point to the increasing magnitude of this unmistakable and undeniable problem. The number of street lanes could be cut by half because garbage spills to cover the other half. The stink, the stench, the smell and – when desperate citizens try to fight the problem with fire – the smoke increasingly overwhelm the people’s sense of civility. Many walk with their faces covered not because of some over-developed sense of modesty or even shame, but because civilized nostrils were never intended to survive sustained ordeals of stomach-wrenching stench.

This columnist has personally heard Metro Manilans wondering aloud – often after forceful ejaculations of gender-biased expletives in reference to some officials’ genealogy – about the possibility of impeaching those tasked with garbage management and disposal in the city. What a good idea!

A constitutional amendment might be in order to effect the public wish. Just the same, the challenge of amending the country’s fundamental law to effect garbage disposal in this country should not daunt patriotic citizens. Times that try men’s and women’s eyes and noses try their souls too and, ultimately, their Christian and Islamic patience.

It would facilitate the impeachment and conviction of such officials – "Your Honors" and perhaps even "One’s Excellency" – if the public were guided by numerical guidelines which define when the accumulated garbage reaches a "critical mass" justifying the physical integration of the official and his uncollected garbage.

The statistical monitor could even be improved so that the accumulated evidence may not have to be physically or visually presented to those trying a garbage impeachment trial. It may be enough to settle for an unmistakable scent of the evidence. One should be able to summarily convict an official if the criminal evidence is detectable by smell within a hundred meters of the accumulated garbage, regardless of wind direction.

Of course, people who think along these lines now are absolutely convinced that garbage mismanagement is a heinous crime. Is there anyone in Metro Manila now who still disagrees with this verdict?