AMID talks of federalizing our system of government, the time has come now to revisit and review the devolution of functions to the Local Government Units (LGUs), to find out what has gone right and what has gone wrong.
As it is commonly used, the term devolution is generally associated with the terms decentralization and localization. As the term suggests, devolution is relative to the source of the authority, implying that a set of authorities is being devolved from a central authority to a local authority.
Up to now, I still remember a lesson that I learned from the late Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez. I served under him as a Press Attaché when he was the Philippine Ambassador to the United States of America (USA).
He said that in the case of the USA, the American Republic was formed by the member states, and thereafter the federal government was formed to be on top of the state governments.
By comparison, the Philippine Republic was formed at a time when the member provinces were already pre-existing. He added that that was the reason why the national government has ascendancy over the provincial governments.
I mentioned the lesson that I learned from Ambassador Pelaez, because in the case of the USA, the term devolution does not apply to them. Over there, the prevailing legal fiction is that the specific matters of governance would belong to the state governments, not unless these are specifically overruled by federal laws. In other words, most of the functions of governance are already devolved to the state governments, right from the very start.
Again by comparison however, in the case of the Philippines, it still has to be decided what functions have yet to be devolved to the prospective state governments.
The health and education functions would be good frames of references for discussing the status of devolution in the Philippines, as a way of finding out what has gone right and what has gone wrong. Between the two, it seems that it is only the health function that has been devolved, at least partially.
I say partially, because it appears that it is only the administration of the public hospitals that have been devolved to the LGUs. In the case of the education function, it appears that it has not been devolved to the LGUs, but there are some LGUs that are practically administering their own public schools, at least in the provision of some material supports.
Sad to say, it could be said in a manner of speaking that it is only the function of administering the public hospitals that has been devolved to the LGUs, but not the budgets to make them run. Very clearly, that is the reason why the public hospitals in the provinces have practically nothing except the hospital buildings, and not even those are well maintained.
There could be some doctors in some of these hospitals here and there, but the quality of their services is often hampered by the lack of equipment and the lack of medicines.
What usually happens is that the indigent patients are given free consultations, but these are practically useless because they do not have the money to buy their medicines. (To be continued)/PN
