How ready are we for Duterte’s federalism?
Federalism is the cornerstone of President Rodrigo Du te rt e’ s policy. This is the shift of the country’s current unitary form to a federal organization. Simple as it sound and despite t he President does huge pronouncement or the said profound changes federalism can actually mean to every Filipino, not all of us or fewer are aware or are interested know how serious the discussion already is. Perhaps even more alarming is the evident public ambivalence toward the idea. Although the effort faces some formidable obstacles, such as determining how revenues will be divided between the national government and provinces, federalism is widely regarded among academics, businesses, a nd t he media — including this paper — as a significantly positive step toward improving government responsiveness and efficiency and spreading economic growth across the whole country.
In a recent survey released by the Social Weather Station, although the President was never a fan of this, found that 75 percent of the public had no prior knowledge of federalism, only learning that it was a current issue when asked about it by the people conducting the survey. Furthermore, the public on the whole appeared to be indifferent to it; 37 percent of respondents said they agreed with the idea of federalism and 29 percent said they disagreed, but about one in three respondents said they had no opinion.
Since the Philippines is and will continue to be a democracy, a comprehensive change to the way the country is governed simply cannot be made in the absence of public awareness and the support of a majority of Filipino citizens. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, Jr. acknowledged as much when asked about the survey results, saying, “the information drive is apparently not enough.”
The problem may not be one of an insufficient amount of information, but rather information that is easily understood and has some practical meaning to the general public. The media and the government’s own public information operations dutifully report on the progress of discussions about the shift to federalism, but more often than not, these reports are somewhat abstract.
In order to increase awareness of this issue and public support for the shift to federalism, the“information drive” must be built on meaningful information that anticipates the questions any regular citizen might ask. For example, how will federalism affect the average family ’ s household finances? What changes will be made in how public services are delivered? How will federalism change institutions, such as schools, public health services and courts?
While prudent in some respects, that caution has encouraged the opinion that the shift to federalism will not take place in the foreseeable future, if at all. Thus, the government should rethink i ts approach, and find ways to increase the flow of relevant information to the public. I also would like to end this topic with a note that there are more pressing issues such as graft and corruption that the President must look into before thinking about federalism. I think if this will not be addressed f rom the root, we will just be changing the name of the government but employ still the same people. ( Paid article)