The politician, dreamer & doer…
Gov. Freddie Maraňon was the consummate politician, a smart tactician who marshalled his forces and wide influence into a formidable political machine. That power can be dangerous in the wrong hands. In the hands of a vision-driven, entrepreneurial leader, that can translate into progress unimpeded by partisan obstructionism or self-interest.
Gov. Freddie took what he inherited from his predecessors, added his Negros First agenda, and brought Negros Occidental to greater heights. Some of his dreams may remain unrealized, but that does not detract from his long list of accomplishments.
As one of his predecessors, and the only one to actually work with him during his last five or six years, I can attest to his passion and the firmness of his vision for a progressive, diversified, resilient and sustainable Negros Occidental, particularly for the poor and the underprivileged.
Gov02, as he was popularly called, leaves a void that will be hard to fill. He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, constituents, development partners and fellow public servants.
Leadership in the time of pandemic…
Tough times call for a special kind of leadership: a crisis manager who is strong, strategic, adaptive and innovative. Hands on and able to inspire, motivate, enable and capacitate public servants and the entire community to deal with a crisis as one. People need to feel confident in their leaders; government needs to be credible, reliable, “in control”, transparent and results-driven.
Above all, the leader is connected and accessible to his constituents in a real sense, a responsive listener more than a mere dispenser of information or directives, and a source of reassurance, comfort, inspiration and confidence.
Measure your leader by these criteria and decide if that’s the leader you want.
The Anti-COVID War: Is the cure worse than the disease?
Are we winning the anti-COVID war? Local government officials and frontliners were asked in a recent webinar. About half of them said yes, health-wise. These were from LGUs that had somehow managed to keep the incidence of COVID cases low. The rest said they were struggling and concerned about the depletion of resources and overloading of their already strained health care systems.
Economy-wise, however, a clear majority said no, they were not winning the war and needed to work on economic recovery measures. (Note: the DILG recently urged LGUs to begin working on economic recovery measures without waiting for an end to the pandemic.)
Clearly, government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in unprecedented damage to the economy. While the loss of lives has necessitated drastic measures to stop the spread of the virus, these measures have led to a far more widespread loss of livelihoods.
Government has spent billions to provide safety nets for the dislocated, but there is little to show for it. Cash doleouts, food packs and other forms of relief are clearly not sustainable.
If the economy does not return to “normal”, a large number of dislocated citizens will go hungry and desperate. “We’d rather catch COVID than die of hunger,” some have said when caught violating IATF directives. Yes, government needs to stimulate the economy, but it needs to find better ways to spend the money.
How do you restart the economy
Analysts have concluded that lifting lockdowns alone will not enable economic recovery and growth. That will not happen until people are confident that things are under control. To make people confident, five factors are needed, according to McKinsey & Company.
These are: 1) Low number of new COVID cases, 2) A demonstrated ability of health interventions to effectively prevent increases in transmission, 3) Ability of the local health care system to handle COVID cases without affecting the delivery of other basic health services, 4) Effective, credible and timely communication, not false assurances, and 5) Public health interventions do not prevent or obstruct economic recovery.
So what should the local government do to get there?
Briefly, they ought to adopt measures to accomplish three things, namely: 1) Control the pandemic, 2) Strengthen local government’s ability to deliver essential services even during a health crisis or natural disaster, and 3) Enable opening of the local economy. That’s the short and simple answer; the devil is in the details.
The ‘STRICT Protection Protocol’…
The first goal can be accomplished by putting in place what I refer to as a ‘STRICT Protection Protocol’ (Surveillance, Testing, Resource Mobilization, Isolation, Contact Tracing, Treatment and Protection (enforcement of or compliance with Protective Protocols). These are far from simple or easy, and they’re just the basics.
Governance…
The second goal (strengthening the LGU’s service delivery systems) may involve upgrading the health care system, retooling the workforce (both public and private sector) to gear up for the digital economy under a “Next Normal”, and reengineering systems to enable contactless e-governance, among others.
Reopening the local economy…
The third goal (enabling the local economy to reopen) will require huge amounts of public cooperation calling for, you guessed it, the right kind of leadership. In essence, people need to understand what conditions are necessary for the local economy to open up, they need to understand their responsibility to maintain those conditions, and it can’t work without everyone’s full cooperation.
What will motivate people to cooperate? Inspiring, empowering, enabling Leadership. But this is only to pave the way for LER, or local economic recovery.
Sustaining Local Economic Developmentand achieving growth…
To sustain economic activity, government (in concert with the business sector) needs to define the conditions necessary for business continuity and economic growth.
In this regard, the local government needs to provide 1) Connectivity to make e-commerce – not to mention blended learning – possible for all; 2) Accessibility, to provide entrepreneurs and investors with access to credit, technology, materials and markets; 3) Mobility, mainly to allow the movement of goods, services and the workforce; 4) Capability retooling to develop the new skills needed by business and industry, and to create a competent and competitive public and private sector workforce; and 5) Adaptive Governance, to meet not just the emerging challenges of the “new normal” but also the prerequisites of the near future’s “next normal”.
An apt reminder: “The future welcomes those who change with the times; the past is littered with dinosaurs that could not.”*
