By Jesus P. Estanislao

Those who choose “good governance” as a core value soon are confronted with its fundamental demand for broad participation and wide involvement. “Good governance” may be easy to shout from the rooftops; but the serious, day-to-day work to make governance deliver results demands cascading, buy-in, continuous communication and exhortation, and above all a system to help ensure that everyone makes governance very much part of “everyone’s everyday work.” Another way of stressing this point is as follows: governance does not stop with smokes and mirrors; it may begin from the very top; but at the end of the day, it must get virtually everyone to hop into the train and work within it so as to help drive that train to its dream destination.

In the case of good governance as a core value for national governance, this fundamental demand for participation and widespread involvement becomes very clear with the reminder that governance is not a matter for the governors only; it is as much a matter for the governed as well. In other words, public officials and ordinary citizens will need to band mind, heart, hands, effort, and resources in order to get the governance train going towards the agreed destination. In clearer terms, “good governance” cannot be presented as a stand-alone core value; it has to be completed by its essential accompanying core value, which is “responsible citizenship.”

In this light, “good governance and responsible citizenship” really belong up there, in the realm of values that we all aspire for, with the hope that we can bring it down to earth so as to help shape more and more the reality of governance in the Philippines.

• Indeed, there is the very widespread tendency for ordinary citizens to limit their participation in national governance to voting in national and local elections.
• After the elections, the widespread tendency is to leave the matter of governing our public affairs in the hands of elected officials.
• During the period in between elections, much of what many citizens do is to observe, read opinion surveys, criticize, and make jokes about the foibles and stumbles of their elected officials. “To complain and criticize” is one of the regular pastimes very many of us engage in.

But the immense power of the ordinary citizenry is what good governance wants to tap. We all are called upon to do our share; to give a positive contribution; to do something constructive, often with many of our fellow citizens, to benefit, promote, and speed up the genuine progress and development of our people/ It is never enough to say this. Under a good governance regime, all this is specified and made concrete. Moreover, we are all made accountable for the contribution each one of us is expected to put in. No Filipino, under a good governance regime, can ever say that any matter of public affairs should be left to the discretion of public officials alone; if it is such a matter (of public affairs), then staying in our own place, taking our own station in life into consideration, we can take concrete initiatives to help address it in a manner consistent with our core values as a people. We cannot be mere fence-sitters; we have to be out there in the arena to do our part in the governance play.

The three core values put forward come in pairs – “love of God and country,” “freedom and democracy,” “good governance & responsible citizenship.” The fact is that each component of the pair is essentially connected with the other component such that it is virtually impossible to separate the two. Three core values with 6 components: Hopefully, they are few enough to remember easily, but comprehensive enough to cover all the important bases in the governance play.