SWIMMING AGAINST THE CURRENT

By DR. JESUS P. ESTANISLAO

Over the centuries, we have been travelling on the road that has been leading us towards becoming one nation, one people. It has taken us a long time; and perhaps we are still very much on the way; but we are most certainly getting there, if we focus on attaining this beautiful dream.

But now and in the decades ahead, we have to travel on this same road, with a more practical and pragmatic orientation. We are no longer fighting for freedom from foreign rule or from a colonial mind set. We are now fighting to substantiate our democracy with development; our freedom with civic, social, and national responsibility; our call for good governance with responsible citizenship.

This is where Anna Patricia comes in, with her call for “promoting nationalism” with a practical, results-oriented bias through creating a distinct “Made in the Philippines” brand, which should stand for creativity, distinctiveness, and very high quality. In other words, we should focus on products we can make with a special touch and competitiveness, and ones that we can sell anywhere at a good price, because of their excellent craftsmanship and very high quality. She even goes way beyond mere products: She also calls for our branding as a nation. She says: “Our country may have a few flaws and shortcomings. But we should not just settle down and complain: we each can try and bring each other up, collaborate and work against these negative elements in our national landscope.”

For this to happen, Patricia calls for a “collaborative environment that would encourage and enable cities/provinces/regions to share information and strategies.” This type of environment will lead us away from over-reliance on “top-down planning”; rather, it emphasizes the imperative of the observance of good governance practices at the level of cities, provinces, and regions. In order to meet this imperative, Patricia brings in a whole set of other players, other than the usual government and other public sector institutions, upon which we used to pin virtually all of yellowed’our hopes. Patricia insists on the role of “business owners and other (private) decision-makers,” who can put the focus on, and give substance to, creating a strong regional, and then also a national brand. Nationalism should translate into the involvement of many other sectors, outside of government, and outside of Metro Manila, in coming up with high-quality products that can be made in the various regions of our country.

In particular, outside of business, Patricia calls for the meaningful and substantive participation and involvement of civic and professional organizations, particularly those at the local — i.e., city, provincial, regional — level. These need to be brought in, perhaps as part of the multi-sector governance coalition, to help define, produce, and promote regionally and nationally branded products and services that provide a distinct face and definition of our increasingly substantiated “nationalism.”

Three things need underscoring in this regard:

• These nationwide civic and professional organizations have “smaller chapters at the local level.” These chapters need to be empowered and made to work autonomously. But they need to be imbued with a spirit of connecting with the “national movement” to contribute towards the Philippine national brand. While these organizations act local, they have to think national (and therefore never forget that they too should be promoting the entire Philippines).

• These organizations should also think “strategic,” i.e., for the sustained, integrated area development of their provinces and regions, with the full consciousness that they have to stay in the game over many years. The time horizon for development and the execution of strategy is always long-term.

• They should focus on meeting the many demands of strategy execution, and these include positive networking (instead of division); delivering real, substantive, game-changing outcomes (rather than mere sloganeering and posturing); and ensuring that vital services for the citizenry are provided efficiently, effectively, and conveniently for the common good of all (rather than “falling into the usual trap of politics” and politicking).

This type of “integrated planning” has another name, and it is the bottom-up approach of good governance.