ForwardBrowse Think Pieces and other opinion articles published on G-Watch as well as other websites.
Jesse Robredo: Profile of a mayor
Robredo said he expects bad people to be smart and to fight hard; so to defeat them, good people should not only be smarter, they should also fight harder.
A Revolution’s Worth
Of all the books that I have managed to read, none is as deeply personal or as emotionally poignant as Subversive Lives 1. Written as a collective memoir of the Quimpo family, the book narrates their shared ordeal under the Marcos dictatorship, and the hardship that each of the siblings had to endure in the course of their resistance to Martial Law.
Such autobiographical style allows the reader to form a mental picture of the series of emotional storms that had repeatedly overtaken this family of “subversives”—from Norman’s Christian dilemma as he agonized over the question of joining the communist-led resistance; to Ryan’s narrow escape from death as the soldier who was about to shoot him was suddenly distracted by an exploding pillbox; to Lilian’s sense of dread and shame as she was repeatedly humiliated by her military interrogators.
Narrating the Future
Society should have a soul—authority. This authority should have a sense of reason that guides and directs—the legislative power. A will that acts and implements—the executive power. A conscience that judges and punishes the bad—the judicial power. Those powers should be independent in the sense that none of them should infringe on the authority of the other. However, the latter two should submit to the former, as will and conscience submit to reason. The executive and judicial cannot separate themselves from the laws passed by the legislative, but the latter does not have any other judge except public opinion, or the people themselves.
A Sunday Reflection on Political Reform Work
Without a constituency rooted below in society and social movements, institutional reform will not stand a chance in Philippine politics.
Hence, if we want reforms in elections, we should build a constituency that will push for and claim those reforms. And this can only be done if electoral and party reform imperatives are mainstreamed and linked in other advocacies in governance and development work.
Government-Citizen Engagement Leading to Empowering Change
If we go down to the grassroots, talk to people, engage government and enable people and government to engage, trusting they would constructively engage, we'll see how everyday a certain Ate Inday or Pastor Nunez struggles to assert their rights, claim what's due them and in the process challenge the existing power relations. How by simply being informed, by caring, by simply asking a question, by reaching out to others and knowing what others are concerned about, by wondering and being bothered with questions on why some gets more than others who need it most, how by simply being a concerned and active citizen, they shake the foundations of injustice and abuse in the country and reclaim the public space for themselves and the many.
Textbook Count: Leading the Way, Throughout the Years
Textbook Count basically provided the blueprint of what we refer to now as Social Accountability, Constructive Engagement, Demand for Good Governance and similar terms that talk about engagement of citizens in governance to enhance transparency and accountability. Even before these terms were coined, there was already the practice and that was primarily Textbook Count.
Learn. Laugh. Make a Difference: Training on Social Accountability, the G-Watch Way!
ASoG’s brand of education is the marrying of theory and practice where academic knowledge is used in order to solve practical problems of our time. It tries to achieve that balance between the realm of ideas and the concrete realities that ideas must contend with to make a difference in real time, real space.
Our approach to change and development is what we call a mosaic approach where scattered efforts and actors working towards change and development are facilitated by the School to come together as pieces of the puzzle that if put together would form an alternative picture of the country.
This seminar serves as another classroom of ASoG. It will be a microcosm of what we endeavor to achieve all over the country.
Briefly, On Political Dynasty
Our premise why dynasties are problematic in democracy is it undermines accountability since decisions that affect the public are made in private sphere (the family). Hence, our working definition of political dynasty is it exists when members of a (nuclear) family occupies seats that have direct mandate to check and balance each other and have legal authority over other means of accountability. It is a state of political monopoly that cancels out checks and balance mechanisms.
G-Watch Localization: Daring to Go Where Politics is At
G-Watch Localization aims to engage the local level to develop a G-Watch application that is attuned to local context and realities. It takes into account the decentralized policy context, the situation and condition of citizen participation in local governance, the nature and practice of the local government unit and the backdrop of socio-cultural realities prevalent and strong at the local area like primacy of kinship, prevalence of patronage and machismo, to name a few. It situates itself in the areas of monitoring and evaluation which remains weak despite the mandated avenues for citizen participation due to sheer lack of resources for it, the lack of capability and its seeming lack of urgency in comparison to other concerns.
When Misallocation of Resources Perpetuates a Form of Injustice
The implication on this seemingly innocent case of misallocation of projects is arguably a vicious cycle of social injustice where those who in need are further deprived because of their condition of un-having, of not having project pre-requisites such as roads, electricity, land, numbers; while those who have enough or have more are given more because of the condition of having, of being accessible, conducive and having the numbers that bring votes.