MANILA, OCTOBER 26, 2010 (MALAYA) ('We continue to maintain the fiction that the barangay elections were non-partisan.' )
THE barangay is the country's basic political unit and is supposed to serve as building blocks for bigger polities with more expansive powers. It does, in fact, serve as the primary interface between the citizen and the government. It performs basic functions such as delivery of basic services, maintenance of peace and order and settlement of dispute.
It has indeed come a long way from its predecessor, the barrio council, one proof of which is the barangay's fiscal independence based on its guaranteed share of internal revenue allotment. More than the expansion of the barangay's formal powers, however, its growing role is best shown by the close attention paid by local executives to winning the support of barangay leaders for the former's political ends, whatever these may be.
And there lies the irony. Yesterday the citizenry trooped to the polling places to elect a new set of officers for the 42,025 barangays nationwide. Yet in this exercise involving more than 300,000 positions, not including those for the youth, we continue to maintain the fiction that the elections were non-partisan.
It is sheer hypocrisy borne out of a system of politics nominally characterized by a multi-party system but, in truth, based on personalities. National and local parties have no differentiated visions and programs of government. Politicians turn their coats at their convenience. It is from these diseases that we try to inoculate barangay politics against.
Clearly, it is an impossibility to wall off barangay politics from partisanship. At any stage of the barangay elections – from the choice of candidates, the filing of certificates of candidacy, the campaign proper to the proclamation of the winners – one can readily observe partisanship at work. Only the blind can't see that one slate of candidates is backed by the incumbent mayor and the other by the out-of-power rival.
Formally recognizing the role of party politics in the barangay elections, of course, will hardly introduce any improvement into the current set-up. But at least we do away with the hypocrisy. And in the long-term, having a working party-based politics at the barangay level, hopefully, would percolate upward lead to a meaningful transformation of national politics.
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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