Dr. Florangel Rosario Braid
Local government gets 40% share of national taxes
January 17, 2025 4:02 pm
It will be remembered that the Supreme Court in 2022 had mandated the allocation of 40 percent of national taxes to local government as per the Mandanas-Garcia ruling. This fund will benefit 1,493 municipalities, 149 cities, and 42,045 barangays.
Because the LGUs had been assured of these additional dividends, most of them had already started with reforms that include “good governance and transparency; sustainable development; empowerment of communities to achieve inclusive governance, economic growth through entrepreneurship initiatives, innovations, job creation; and improved delivery of public services in healthcare, education, and infrastructure development.” Several local governments now collaborate with organizations in providing training on good governance to promote transparency and accountability.
New beginnings
January 03, 2025 8:46 pm
Although 90 percent of Filipinos surveyed by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) indicated that they are more hopeful than fearful about 2025, this was lower by 15 percent in comparison with the previous year. But this is good enough considering that 2024 had been quite a challenging year at various fronts – political, economic, and geo-political.
A fun-filled wedding; Innocents’ Day, and leadership reforms
December 27, 2024 11:54 pm
A week ago, I attended the wedding of my grand niece, Geline Clemente to Pen Teves at St. Paul’s Parish in Eastwood. I expected the usual traditional wedding of Filipino families – with some 170 guests primarily family and close friends and colleagues, (described as small but is large when compared with counterparts in North America).
Wins at the human rights front
December 20, 2024 11:34 pm
A triumph of various human rights group, and it happened a few days before Christmas.
Challenges in community media digitalization in a democracy
December 13, 2024 4:09 pm
There appears to be a growing interest in community media here and in the developing world. Here, it is triggered by challenges of food security and governance trends in the implementation of the Mandanas ruling on the provision of IRA to local government this coming year. The future of rice and fish and other commodities depend upon the capacity of our local communities to meet the demand of the entire population for these basic supplies.
Among communicators, the focus is on how to revitalize community broadcast and print media to meet the information needs of the regions. This, by combining the capacities of local broadcasting and the community newspaper with digitalization so that they can effectively be utilized in community development, and by creative utilization of indigenous media found in poetry, music, dance, storytelling etc. The challenge is to upgrade the quality of both the content and its delivery through use of digital images.