The Endless Failure of ARMM By Kim Bagundang In ARMM, everyone is working hard to leave with legacy before the Bangsamoro takeover. The governor and his secretaries are all working in double time bases to make a difference. With the volume of efforts and money pouring to the community, there is no doubt that ARMM will leave legacy at the end of its last era. However, there are no indicators of change in socio-economic condition of the people. Based on the latest statistic survey, ARMM remained on the bottom of poverty and considered as a black hole in the Philippine economy. Behind all these failures of ARMM are invisible epidemic diseases that they never see or maybe they just neglected. I am the Assistant Manager of the ARMM-HELPS, a multi-million special program funded by national government that allocates 10 million pesos to each identified beneficiary Barangays. I visited many communities in ARMM with close dialogue to the local people. I see the real situation in their community and I actually sense the future of the ARMM-HELPS projects. The possibility of failure is very high whereas the possibility of success is unfortunately very low. But there are some exemptions with the like of Barangay Bugabungan in North Upi, Maguindanao. With the kind of leadership attitude, there are no doubt the ARMM-HELPS project will become a catalyst of development in that community. The efforts of the governor to deliver the basic services to the needy people are very strong but as I see, his effort will end up nothing if the Third World Attitude will not be minimized. This perennial problem will affect not only the ARMM today but the future government of Bangsamoro as well. The promise of Bangsamoro utopian government will possibly end like ARMM if the Third World Attitude will not be considered as deadlyeconomic cancer. No matter how many billions the amount of money the Bangsamoro will have, it will only end with nothing but failure. In reality, there are few Third World nations that have already resisted with this invisible enemy like Singapore. What are these deadly Third World Attitudes that kills ARMM economy softly? – Money Laundering: ARMM is an autonomy, a little form of nation. Nations survive with their strong economy. Nations control their economy through monetary system. ARMM has no monetary system because it is affiliated with Philippine monetary system. With this situation, ARMM become vulnerable to money laundering. The biggest investor in ARMM is government but those investments are diverted to non-ARMM communities. This diversion of investments is carried out by local chief executives (LCE) who are living outside ARMM. The bulk of those government investments are circulating in Non-ARMM cities leaving the ARMM communities idle because no money circulating in the community to ignite local economy. The assumption is that even though all government money will be stolen by the LCE yet they manage to live in their political places, that money can still be useful and beneficial to the people because apparently domino economic effects to the community will most likely generated. The politics of local economy is to have person or persons with money in community to buy local products and establish local businesses. Absences of this will surely makes community the sleepy economy with very explosive social order. – Time lax: People in the tropical country like Philippines are very poor on time management. They are very lax sitting all day waiting for nothing. In a region like ARMM who have been 30 years lagged behind in terms of development, people should have to utilize even night time to recover the long lost time. The government on the other hands should find ways to introduce new paradigm in utilizing time as major raw material in development efforts. – Agriculture Oriented People: People in the 3rd world are tied to agriculture based economy. In a nation like ARMM that have very small land with big population, it is not wise to focus solely on agricultural based economy because agriculture has long gestation period. It is high risk undertakings considering the environmental and pests vulnerability. Also proven that most of the agriculture countries are poor nations. A small and populated region like ARMM essentially needs faster income to sustain basic needs of the growing population. – Consumer Oriented Attitude: People in the 3rd world are hard to understand the power of local production for external market instead they are succumbed to being consumer in mind. It is very obvious that most of the livelihood proposals from the community are businesses circulating in the community alone that do not generate external market. Examples of the typical proposals are sari-sari store, low quality handicraft, bread making, water station, Carinderia, small scale food processing and the likes. These proposals do not generate external money that coming to community to regenerate new businesses instead it draining local economy. These livelihoods should be undertaken by private people but not government or foreign donors. These have been done in the last 20 years but repeatedly failed. People in the government are just doing what is in the menu of the program to be called good implementer. At the end all of these projects are failed. – Absentee Political Leaders: In ARMM, almost all local chief executives are non-residents of their political constituencies. They must be the catalyst of their community development because the government investments are in their hands. But where are they? In the Island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi most of their Mayors, Governors and Congressmen are in Zambuanga City while the Barangay chairmen are mostly found either in Isabela, Lamitan, Jolo or Bungao leaving their barangays with nobody but the goons. In Lanao Del Sur, Political leaders generally are residing either or both in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro. In Maguindanao, they are spending their time and resources to Cotabato City, Davao City, or Tacurong City. No amount of efforts can reverse the economic condition of ARMM with this kind of attitudes. – War Minded: People in community waste much of their time talking about guns, politics, wars and violence. To generate culture of development, we must talk and discuss a lot on economic issues rather than politics, wars and sectarian conflicts. – Aid Dependency: Both government and non-government institutions in ARMM are aid dependent. We do not generate local source of funds for our development initiatives instead we only waiting to external donors to fund our economic activity. Dependency to foreign aid will never uplift ARMM economy. – Colonial Minded People: We talk too much on self-determinations, independence, political freedom, socio-economic freedom but we do nothing in transforming them into reality. Example that when the revolutionaries assimilated to government, they forget their idealism and enjoy theluxury of government benefits and eventually migrated to nearby cities to escape away to responsibilities and commitments from their mother community. To be free from the bandage of foreign domination, we must act as free people by building our own economy, promoting social identity and rehabilitation of our broken politics. – Political Immature: In ARMM, election is meaningless because of the wholesale vote buying throughBalwarty system. In return, the politicians are no longer delivering the basic services to the people. They are claiming that all development projects are intended for them and perceiving that they have large proportion of shares out of these funded projects. – Lack of Common Good Effort: Most of the political leaders in 3rd world are self-centered with their general perception of “mine is mine and yours is mine”. To be free from this attitude, people should have more efforts on common good activity to generate healthy society leading to development. – Vertical Non-priority Projects: Politicians love to build very expensive sports building and other infrastructures with minimal economic return. At the end, these are become white elephant projects because it does not have respond to the needs of community. There are a lot of idle buildings in the community that is home to goats and spiders because nobody using it as productive facility. In Rajabuayan, Maguindanao for example; you can see hundreds of DSWDs decaying uninhabited housing and in Lanao del Sur you can see lot of barangay halls and warehouses inhabited by goats. These white elephant projects is a waste of money that never contribute to uplift the ARMM economy. – Fly-by-night Cooperatives: Fake cooperatives are rampant and the most misunderstood concept of development in ARMM. The government are insisting too much on cooperative development but local people understand that cooperative is a mere requirement to get money from government and donor agencies. Again, no amount of effort the government will do, the cooperative will end failure because of this attitude. – Poor Education: Most of the poor standard schools are found in 3rd world countries compared to those developed countries in the 1st world. Majority of students in these countries are hesitant to take economic related courses to lead local development initiatives. They concentrate mostly on service oriented courses with their aims to work abroad. The results are, those few intelligent students were exported to other country leaving their mother land brain drained. These are some of many third world attitudes that are burying this country into morass of irreversible poverty. In the case of ARMM-HELPS projects, it aims to showcase developed barangays by way of building government infrastructures to create good and transparent governance and to provide livelihood projects that will sustain the economic needs of the people. ARMM-HELPS pouring 10 million pesos amount of projects for each identified barangay aiming to reverse the condition of ARMM. This is a huge amount of money for a rural barangays with an average population of 1,000. If these funds are properly utilized by the barangay for the benefits of their people, there will be a definite turning points to this community. However, with the strong presence of 3rd world attitude, the chances of change are very slim no matter what kind of measurement we do. To minimize or maybe avert some of this endless failure, the ARMM policymaker should adopt the recommendations below: • Creation of Economic Intelligence Agency to study and monitor the economic activity in ARMM; • Mass activity on paradigm shifting in re-educating people on economic issues both in media, fora, and in school subject; • Enact laws to oblige the local chief executives and government workers to reside in their political constituency during their term of office; • Creation of Local Industrial and Commercial Zones to confine the development in the community; • Economic attraction through community modelling of success stories; • Massive production of food related products for external market because food is an endless consumable product with unlimited market; • Localize development initiatives to minimize migration of workers to outside cities that lead to abuse of poor workers and women; • Establishment of Local Financial Catalyst (Bank) that will cater the financial needs of the local people; • Re-educate the people with real cooperative-ism; • For ARMM-HELPS Livelihood projects, it needs a live-in mentor staff that will provide the day to day supervision of the projects within the period of 6 months transition before it will fully turn over to the cooperatives. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Kim Bagundang is NSD-CCP Fellow, a US State Department Scholar at Northern Illinois University, USA; Graduate of AB Economics and Master in Business Administration at Notre Dame University with Management Course at Asian Institute of Management, and with Local Economic Development (LED) studies at Ateneo School of Government.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 13:40:09 +0000
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