Local government budgets in the Philippines are by nature public and are important instruments for policy making and planning. But, inequities often emerge when local officials monopolize allocation decisions, which do not always reflect the priorities of the people who rely on local government services such as health care, social services, and low-cost housing for survival.
Historically, civil society organizations (CSOs) have played a critical role in improving the local budgeting process. Their engagement with local governments not only enhances transparency by revealing how funds are allocated, but also increases legitimacy by opening dialogue and building consensus. (more…)
In its Global Gender Gap 2010 Report, released last week, the World Economic Forum ranked the Philippines 9th among nearly 200 countries in gender equity. The Philippines is also Asia’s highest-ranking country (followed by Sri Lanka at 16, and Mongolia at 27). It ranks 1st on both education and health among Asian countries, and boasts very strong performances overall on economic participation (13th) and political empowerment (17th).
The Philippines ranks as Asia's best country on gender quality, illustrating the great strides Filipino women have made in society. But serious discrimination, such as workplace harassment and human trafficking remains.
The Philippines is the only country in Asia this year to have closed the gender gap on both education and health – it’s in the company of only eight countries in the world to have done so.
This good news comes amidst the current debate over the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill in the Philippines, which has languished in oblivion in several Congresses because of the staunch opposition of the very influential Catholic Church, but has been thrust into the limelight again after President “Noynoy” Aquino recently declared reproductive health a major priority of his. (more…)
Ms. Samar Minallah, Executive Director, Ethnomedia, a distinguished activist and documentary film maker, Ms. Minallah explored a range of issues pertaining to human rights, advocacy for women, and social media through a professional affiliation with the San Francisco-based Global Fund for Women and networking with domestic and international organizations. She also presented her groundbreaking video productions on the status of women in Pakistan.
The Asia Foundation Chang-Lin Tien Fellows Program was established to foster exchanges for leaders to meet and interact with their counterparts in Asia and the U.S. The fellowship honors the late Dr. Chang-Lin Tien, former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, for his many accomplishments in science, higher education, and community affairs. It was created to highlight Dr. Tien’s assuming the chairmanship of The Asia Foundation Board of Trustees in 1999.
The 1991 Local Government Code, which initiated the decentralization process in the Philippines by empowering local governments to more effectively respond to their community needs, has always been referred to as radical and revolutionary. It now serves as an example for other countries on how local governments have accepted, adjusted, and adapted to this development panacea.
However, after nearly two decades of local autonomy, it has become imperative to know and describe the progress, initiatives, and innovations of local governments 19 years after the Local Government Code was passed.
The 11th Rapid Field Appraisal (RFA) – the first since 2001 – was conducted from February to May 2010 in 15 regions of the country, covering a total of 177 local governments. (more…)
Diplomatic Editor at The Times of India Ms. Indrani Bagchi’s program focus was on U.S.-China relations and the implications for third countries, addressed through affiliation with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., seminars, and meetings with foreign policy specialists in research centers and the public sector.
The Asia Foundation Chang-Lin Tien Fellows Program was established to foster exchanges for leaders to meet and interact with their counterparts in Asia and the U.S. The fellowship honors the late Dr. Chang-Lin Tien, former Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, for his many accomplishments in science, higher education, and community affairs. It was created to highlight Dr. Tien’s assuming the chairmanship of The Asia Foundation Board of Trustees in 1999.
A leading specialist in Chinese ceramics, Curator of Chinese Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Ms. Li He’s fellowship enabled her to attend a conference on early white-glazed porcelain in Henan, China, organized jointly by the Henan Provincial Museum and the Palace Museum in Beijing; followed by a symposium in Taipei, Taiwan on the collections of the Palace Museums in Taipei and Beijing. She concluded the trip with a visit to the latter museum, where she met with curators to discuss a proposed ground-breaking joint exhibition of art from the two Palace Museums to be shown at the Asian Art Museum.
Established by the late Asia Foundation President Emeritus Ambassador Haydn Williams, the Margaret F. Williams Memorial Fellows in Asian Art Program honors his late wife, whose interest in Asian art was stimulated by their travels together on Asia Foundation visits to the region. Mrs. Williams was also a founding docent at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the cooperating partner in implementing the fellowship program.
The fact that an In Asia blog piece was scheduled to appear just two days after polls closed for the May 10 general elections in the Philippines was enough to cause anxiety for this writer. In the past, it was literally weeks before results of manual counting of handwritten ballots would produce results. This time, though, two days is enough to analyze results and winners – to everybody’s surprise.
Campaign banners fill the streets on election day.
Election day headlines reflected reports about problems in the automation, adding “glitches” to the alliterative litany of Philippine election problems: guns, goons, and gold. However, in the end, less than 500 of the more than 76,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines failed – to be quickly replaced from the stock of substitutes. Electronic transmission of results at the end of the day could also be slow in some places – at Tetuan Elementary School in Zamboanga City, it took 90 minutes for the first precinct to transmit its results (though subsequent transmissions went more quickly). But suddenly, by 3 a.m., national networks were announcing that several local races had already been declared. (more…)
In the past, Philippine elections have frequently been marred by allegations of widespread cheating and other electoral malpractice. The most famous (or perhaps infamous) method of cheating is called dagdag/bawas (add-subtract), when votes are subtracted from the opposition candidate and added to a favored candidate, and vice versa.
Concerns over election credibility have been exacerbated by the typically long period between voting and the official announcement of results. Delays were caused in part by an antiquated polling procedure that required voters to remember candidate names and write them on a ballot paper, leaving polling officials to decipher the handwriting of all voters, including some less than fully literate, all the while dealing with complaints from watchful party officials who were “certain” that the illegible scrawl was a vote for their candidate.
A local woman examines a mock ballot during a voter education seminar on the new automated technology.
Increasing public frustration prompted the Philippine government to propose in the mid-1990s that the polling process be automated to decrease cheating and simplify polling and vote-counting. Some supported this because they believed automation would serve as an effective check on cheating, while others saw modernization as a means to finally do away with the infamous write-in ballot process.
After several false starts, automated elections were finally tested in the 2008 Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections. (more…)
As the Philippines enters the final stretch before elections on Monday, May 10, competing survey results continue to deluge the public. The Philippines is well-endowed with respected, technically sound public opinion pollsters (as well as long-standing market researchers). So much so, that many suggest a “poll of polls” approach is necessary to make sense of it all.
Actually, with respect to the president and vice presidential races (who are actually elected separately, though they run as a team), recent results are easy to interpret – all reveal clear front-runners. A Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey from April 16-19 has the Liberal Party’s Noynoy Aquino (Ninoy and Corazon Aquino’s son) leading the Nacionalista Party’s Manny Villar by 12 points, 38 to 26. The same poll puts the Liberal Vice Presidential candidate Mar Roxas ahead of the Nacionalista’s Loren Legarda by 39 to 24 (with Makati Mayor Jojemar Binay at 25 percent – he is running in tandem with former President Estrada who ranked third as a presidential candidate in this year’s race, at 17 percent).
In the Philippines, there is a well-known saying by Jose Rizal:
Ang hindi lumilingon sa pinanggalingan ay Hindi makararating sa paroroonan.
“One who does not look back from where she came will never reach her destination.”
So, as we prepare for the May 10 general elections here, we should review the past – but how far back need we go? The history of elections in the Philippines stretches back to the July 1907 elections to the Philippine Assembly. Having elections that long ago – before the regularization of a Filipino bureaucratic structure – is important to note because it means that Philippine civil servants have, since 1907, always been susceptible to politicization. This has contributed to the weak state structure that we have today.
Elections in the Philippines have long been controversial. For instance, the election of 1949 (incidentally, the year I was born) was condemned as particularly dirty since the military was used against the opposition (producing a sweep for the Liberal Party). (more…)
