Social accountability in action

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña  

This is the seventh and final column in this series (written with the research assistance of my brilliant collaborator Christian Laluna) where we explore the concept of social accountability: what it means, what it entails from its practitioners, and what its potential benefits are to governance, to citizens, the community, and the nation. We have set it as an alternative to mainstream governance, where policy-making, execution, and especially accountability are mainly in the hands of government officials. We have emphasized the democratic, citizen-building character of social accountability. In today’s final column, I will be talking about social accountability in action, using as examples the CheckMySchool.org and Government Watch (G-Watch) initiatives, the former of which was created with the assistance of Affiliated Network for East Asia and the Pacific (ANSA-EAP) and the latter a long-standing program in the Ateneo School of Government

Of all the policy areas of government, there may be no more critical priority than education, as reflected in the weight of the budget given to the Department of Education (DepEd). At the same time, the money and investments in other resources (such as textbooks and educational materials, construction of classrooms) poured into DepEd makes the department one of the most tempting targets for graft and for corrupt activities, as shown in the past by the high-profile “noodle” and “textbook” scams, where government had to pay for overpriced noodles and erroneous textbooks. In Robbed: An Investigation of Corruption in Philippine Education, Yvonne Chua of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism found that corruption was so institutionalized in education policy, both nationally and at the local level, that “payoffs have become the lubricant that makes [DepEd] run smoothly.” It is lamentable that corrupt practices would be necessary just for policies to push forward. Transparency and accountability became the watchwords for DepEd reform.

What G-Watch and CheckMySchool.org have done was to put as much of the responsibilities of transparency and accountability as could be placed into the hands of ordinary yet committed citizens, using established and workable mechanisms and tools. G-Watch covers electoral reform and human rights in its agenda as well, but it is in monitoring the delivery of educational services that the initiative had cut its teeth. Through the Textbook Count Project, for example, and in cooperation with DepEd, G-Watch gave citizen groups the means to monitor the bidding for, and production and delivery of textbooks across the country. With training and tools, diverse groups and peoples such as parents, students, village and church leaders, and Boy and Girl Scout troops were able monitor the cost, quantity, and quality of textbook delivery, and that the bidding and delivery process observed the proper procedures.

Social accountability and leadership

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña 

In this sixth of seven columns on social accountability, I explore the costs of social accountability. The truth is the greatest benefits often ask for the corresponding price. Public policies such as government fiscal stability, land reform, universal health care, education, and the like could require sacrifices borne by different sectors of society. Politics is the dynamic with which people decide how these costs are to be equitably distributed. The problem is that in practice, either these costs are either not equitably distributed, or perceived as so. As revealed in previous columns, this is often the result of ordinary men and women, communities, and sectors of society excluded from, or not participating in, the formal policy-making process.

Dissatisfaction with policy, whether justified or not, is in the end inimical to both governance and community. Only a couple of weeks ago has the country seen what happens when grievances entrench government and society against each other, in the transport and PALEA strikes, and protests in response to budget cuts to health and education. This is indeed a communication problem, but not in the traditional idea of “the people speak, the government listens” and vice-versa (incidentally, that arena is covered by the Freedom of Information Act, which was discussed last week). We must move beyond mere exchange of ideas, interests, and positions into the realm of participation, walking together in each other’s shoes. This is the realm of social accountability.

 As the Affiliated Network on Social Accountability - East Asia Pacific (ANSA-EAP) has learned, an emphasis on mainstreaming social accountability aims to reverse this cycle of policy and protest by involving them in the policy process from the start. Part of the light at the end of the tunnel comes from educating citizens on the costs of policy and policy reform, true to the organization’s “Learning in Action” mantra, by exposing government and civilian parties to each other’s predicaments and perspectives in each stage of the process.

Social accountability and freedom of information

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña

Access to information is critical for social accountability and governance at large. Most crucial therefore of the tools that promote social accountability is the freedom of information bill which continues to be pending in Congress. For this reason, I devote the fifth column of my social accountability series on this matter.

While this has been announced as a priority of President Benigno Aquino III almost from his inauguration, it is almost disheartening to note that more than a year has passed since his election to the Presidency without significant progress in getting the bill through Congress, and that he had been virtually silent on the matter in his last State-of-the-Nation Address (although he subsequently addressed the issue in media). To date, the matter is still under “careful study”, which has saddened if not angered government reform activists.

Disappointed as I am about developments, I am not inclined at the moment to either lay blame on him or anyone else for the bill’s stalled status, or to consider this a betrayal of the public trust by people involved. Even well-meaning policies like FOI must pass through the formal legislative process in order to properly become law, and compete with other demands on the government’s agenda. Also, a policy reform as transformative as FOI will naturally encounter much inertia from affected officials, bureaucracies, and interests. The reality is that sustaining far-reaching policies will require much political capital. I am quite familiar with this, in experiences ranging from protecting vulnerable forests while in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, to the painstaking negotiations for peace in Mindanao (as both an observer-consultant and once as part of the government negotiating panel). Governance is a very costly business, which demands the utmost care from its practitioners.

Social accountability, antidote to corruption

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña 

With this column, I resume the series on social accountability which I began last month. So far as I have written three columns on the subject: introducing this new governance tool, discussing how it could be mainstreamed, and defining it. In this column, I will examine the utility of social accountability as a solution to corruption, a timely topic given the recent re-arrest of ex-General Carlos Garcia to serve his court-martial sentence.

When we speak of anti-corruption, the popular images which appear to the layman’s mind are that of the “crusading, crime-busting official” (usually the Ombudsman, especially now with former Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales in the office) or the “lone voice in the wilderness”, often personified by the whistleblower (such as Clarrisa Ocampo, Jun Lozada) or a conscientious, compassionate public servant (like Heidi Mendoza) against an insensitive and corrupt bureaucracy. Yet the battle for efficient, effective, and responsive governance is one that is not successfully fought alone.

As the old adage goes, “it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon.” More accurately, it is a relay race: more than one participant contribute to sustaining the effort towards the finish line. In fact, it is sad to reiterate that one reason why anti-corruption has yielded sluggish results in the Philippines is that we, as citizens, demand clean government yet fail to supply resources to make such government successful and sustainable.

Making social accountability happen

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña

This is the third of six columns on social accountability. In the first column, I wrote about why social accountability was an imperative of good governance while last week, in the second column of the series, I discussed its mainstreaming in governance processes such as the peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In this third column, I write more in-depth about social accountability—what it really means and how to make it happen.

As with all things new, social accountability requires the aging of practical experience and studious analysis to produce the proverbial finest wine: governance that is to the people’s taste and liking. In the past four to five years that the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability has been in existence, beginning with Africa in 2007, the network, through its regional affiliates, has continued to refine the social accountability concept with each workshop and pilot project.

The Affiliated Network for Social Accountability—East Asia Pacific (ANSA-EAP), for example, believes that the quality of good governance is a result of the transparency, accountability, and public participation in government policy-making and implementation, held against the bad practices of corruption, waste, inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and government apathy. Transparency, accountability, and participation are necessary for responsive governance, and they have to overcome bad government practices. In developing-world countries, bad governance may be the norm rather than the exception, and people will find a lot of opposition from entrenched interests and uninterested public officials in ensuring good governance. Here in the Philippines, we have obstruction, lack of cooperation, and delays in the investigation of anomalies and crimes, inhibiting accountability; the Freedom of Information Act still has yet to be given priority, leaving people in the “governance dark”, inhibiting transparency; and many fear reprisal for exposing corruption and crime, while others feel powerless in the face of bad governance, and simply remain apathetic, inhibiting participation.

Social Accountability in the MILF Negotiations

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña 

This is the second of a series of columns I am writing on an emerging and powerful tool for good governance called social accountability. Originally, I planned in this column to discuss how we, as a society and as a body politic, can mainstream social accountability into our governance processes. I will still do that but, to illustrate the points I want to make, I decided to use as a jumping point two events this week that reminded me of how important social accountability is for good governance. Last Sunday, we celebrated the 28th anniversary of the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. Since yesterday and continuing today, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are meeting in Kuala Lumpur to negotiate a peace agreement. In both cases, the aftermath of Aquino's assassination and the conduct of peace negotiations, the mainstreaming of social accountability would have (in the investigation of the former) and will (in how the outcome of the MILF peace negotiations will be accepted) make a difference.

I am particularly concerned that there is speculation that there is already a done, secret deal on Mindanao peace, one that has not been consulted with the people, especially the stakeholders from Mindanao. As a former participant in the peace negotiations and as someone who has observed these processes for a long time, I am confident that there is no such secret  agreement, the Tokyo meeting of President Aquino with MILF Chairman Murad notwithstanding. There is a long way to go before the peace negotiations reaches the final stages and I am sure the government and the MILF panels, who are trustworthy and experienced people, will be consulting with their respective constituencies at the appropriate time. However, if we have mainstreamed social accountability in our governance processes, there won't be as much speculation and unfounded fears as we are seeing now.

Social accountability, an imperative

By Dr. Antonio G.M. La Viña

This is the first of six columns I intend to write about “social accountability” and the Affiliated Networks for Social Accountability. I decided to write this series because social accountability is an idea, a powerful tool for good governance, whose time has come. ANSA, on the other hand, is a global network of institutions and researchers dedicated to promoting social accountability concepts and practices, and in developing citizen engagement by leveraging demand-side governance: helping people connect with their governments, and make them accountable for public goods and services. I am grateful to my writing collaborator Christian Laluna and the ANSA team in the Ateneo School of Government for assisting me with these columns.

What has been called the “Third Wave of Democracy” by Samuel Huntington describes the growth, around the end of the Cold War and the following years, in the number of countries which have granted their citizens the right to vote at large for their government, and guaranteed their civil liberties and human rights such as the right to free speech. It remains an admittedly incomplete picture, though, because civil liberties and periodic elections are two out of three ingredients for a sustainable, stable democratic state. Voting and human rights are not merely ends in themselves, but the tools by which citizens can ensure their prosperity, welfare, and stability. In the political environment, this is achieved through the policy process—in short, through governance.

This is where the ball is often sadly dropped. As the Philippine experience will attest, it is very difficult to translate electoral gains into policy gains: ensuring that the public servants elected into office execute the mandates for which they were elected. As well, Filipinos certainly enjoy many liberties—one of the most free presses in the region, if not the world; a political culture built on the foundations of the EDSA People Power revolutions; an expectation of democracy, even in spite of the occasional cynicism about Philippine politics. Yet for these advantages, we still face the challenges of bridging the gap between the rich and poor; effectively delivering basic services such as education, health and welfare; protecting the environment and marginalized peoples; and ensuring fairness and justice in the distribution of public wealth. Corruption still plagues governance, as recent headlines show.