Presidential candidate Senator Panfilo M. Lacson has stressed that there is a correct way for the government to intervene in the lives of Filipinos – by boosting their capacity-building instead of passing regulations that only lead to stagnation.

In front of over 2,600 enthusiastic supporters at a school in Mawab, Davao de Oro over the weekend, Lacson, Partido Reporma chairman, said the government needs to do more positive intervention and capacitate local governments starting from the municipal level for more Filipinos to feel meaningful change.

Government should also be a better partner with the private sector instead of treating companies as competitors, the longtime public servant said, as he, running mate Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, and Partido Reporma’s senatorial candidates wrapped up two days of campaigning in the Davao Region.

‘’You know, intervention is the problem of our national government, in regulation, it’s overregulated now. The intervention we need is positive,” Lacson told the residents of Mawab.

For example, the three-term senator said most local government units had no capacity in terms of long-term community planning or well-trained planning officers for their towns or cities.

This is where the national government could intervene by sending local government unit (LGU) officers to the Local Government Academy or the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) where they could study how to craft and implement plans properly for long-term progress, the veteran lawmaker said.

Lacson already did this in a limited scope as the rehabilitation czar for the Aquino administration in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda.

Through a $10-million study grant by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the government trained 161 community planners with the DAP, which in turn benefited 171 LGUs in their post-Yolanda rehabilitation and recovery measures.

‘’That’s what’s called capacity building. Let’s capacitate the municipalities that are rather lacking, meaning incapacitated – let’s help them,” the former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief added.

Another example of capacity-building surfaced as the country battled the COVID-19 pandemic, Lacson noted.

Even as big corporations approached the Lacson-Sotto tandem, as ranking senators, to offer to buy vaccines for their own workforces, the Partido Reporma presidential bet said they were denied outright in some cases.

‘’The national government was saying, ‘No. Only we can procure (vaccines). You all have to go through us. (That was a) disincentive. What if they were allowed? We would have vaccinated a lot more Filipinos earlier. It’s as if (government officials) were treating the employees of the big firms as not citizens of the Republic of the Philippines,’’ Lacson said.

Rich LGUs such as cities in Metro Manila were in the same boat as large corporations, the career law enforcer added, as the national government insisted on tripartite agreements with the pharmaceutical companies making the COVID vaccines before rolling them out to Filipinos.