I HAVE been writing about national development for a long time now.
I realized that nation building is really a better term to use, since it is easier to understand, and is actually more encompassing.
Based on this new understanding, nation building could mean anything and everything that will contribute to the fabric of our national life, and the long term stability of our institutions as a nation.
For purposes of clarification, I still would like to point out that growth is not the same as development. A nation could grow in terms of population and in many other aspects, but that does not necessarily mean that it has already developed. In this sense, nation building is really different from national development; a nation could be built without being fully developed.
By implication, development should be the outcome of a plan, as in a national development plan. Perhaps this is where nation building could really be different from national development, because nation building could be the activity of individual persons in particular and the citizenry in general, whereas national development is supposed to be a process that should be led by the government, specifically its development and policy planners.
Based on the general definition of nation building that I am now presenting, it could be said that any form or function of corporate social responsibility (CSR) could be considered as leading to, or contributory to nation building. This would include all efforts of private corporations, as well as those of privately led civic organizations.
By definition, or I should say by expectation, our national development plan should be translated into the local development plans of our municipalities and provinces. At this point, I would like to suggest that we just use the term “municipalities” to refer to both the cities in the towns. This should be a no-brainer, because up to now, even the city halls are still called “municipio”.
Up to now, I could not understand why the Local Government Code (LGC) removed the supervision and the authority of the provincial governments from the chartered cities. As a result of that, new capitol buildings have to be built outside the capital cities where these used to be located. In some cases, we have ironical situations wherein capitol buildings are located inside the chartered cities where they do not exercise authority.
Looking at it from another perspective, our national development plan could also have been based on the inputs of our provincial development plans, but it appears that that is not possible now, because of the fact that the LGC has removed the jurisdiction of the chartered cities from the provinces.
At the very least, I would say that this is not good for environmental planning and management, because despite the artificial political divisions, all the provinces, including the chartered cities are in the same biosphere, and in the same watersheds.
Also looking at it from another perspective, it is really important and necessary to support and sustain all privately led initiatives in nation building, because of the weaknesses and shortcomings in the publicly led national development planning and implementation. Hopefully and with God’s grace, the private efforts in nation building could fill in the gaps that are left open by the government led national development planning function.
In theory, the government is supposed to be owned by the people, given the fact that all the officials and staff of the three branches of the government are in the payroll of the people. In this sense, it could truly be said that governance is not supposed to be the exclusive domain or function of the bureaucracy, meaning that the people should be part of the governance process both at the local and the national levels.
In theory as well, the people are supposed to be represented in the municipal and in the provincial councils, but the actual practice is very far from the theory. As it is now, there appears to be no venue where the people could actually participate in the monitoring and the reporting of the status of the local and the national development plans.
The people are also supposed to be represented in the municipal and the provincial development councils, but these do not seem to be functioning. If only these are functioning, then CSR programs and projects could also help./PN
