Mayor Evelio Leonardia’s local political party in the last elections was called “Partido Progreso” and the party’s battle cry was “Rebuilding Bacolod” and “Fast Forward Bacolod”.
After four years, the Leonardia administration’s battle cry is a far cry from the realities on the ground, a lost voice in the forest.
Bacolod Councilor Celia Flor, head of the City’s Anti-Poverty Council, said, “The city’s development program is confusing, because how can it have a clear thrust and realistic goal when it has not even made a baseline data of the poverty conditions in the city?”
“How can the city chart a development program that will truly benefit the poor when it does not even have clear data on who are the real poor in the city?” Flor also said.
So what happens, Flor lamented, is that the city’s poverty alleviation services are not really given to the real poor; instead, they end up in the hands of the city leadership’s “voting base”.
This is a serious problem that poses pain in the administration’s head, and put its credibility on the line.
Truly “rebuilding” Bacolod requires first and foremost a comprehensive grasp of the objective conditions. A development program follows. A development plan is a critical starter, because it defines clearly the ideas of where to go and how to get there.
Charting a truly comprehensive development program requires not just board work among the city’s executive assistants, hired consultants, doctorates, and technocrats but real consultations with the people: the majority urban poor, drivers, vendors, youth, OFW (overseas Filipino worker) families, and the lower stratum of the middle class as the main forces of development.
If the Leonardia administration is truly committed to be a government that is for the people, then it must offer them not only a new set of dynamic and critical people, but a development program that is from, with and for the people.
The “Premier City” could be a dynamic center and engine of growth, but it can never be for the poor. In fact, Bacolod’s becoming a “Premier City” is going to be at the expense of the poor.
This problem is only going to fuel more contradictions between and among city officials, between the Mayor and some liberal-minded Sangguniang Panlungsod (City Council) members, and between them and the Bacolodnons who are increasingly becoming impatient over their unaddressed demands.
Any seasoned development manager knows that he cannot start something, much less chart strategy, without a good map of the terrain he is going to and without an idea of how to engage in it.(Bulatlat.com)
