Governance 101! Identify Basic Needs; Find, Deliver Solutions

Some critical followers of this page challenged me to share my track record in governance to back up my claim that I could contribute meaningful programs for the Filipino people if elected Senator.

The challenge is accepted and I will start with my performance in my 3-year stint as Mayor of my birthplace, M’lang, an agricultural town beside the vast Liguasan Marsh in Central Mindanao.

My entry into politics in 1995 was not planned.

It was my father, the late Bernardo Magbanua Piñol, who originally vied for the mayorship of our hometown, M’lang, Cotabato, after serving two terms as Board Member of the province.

About a month before the elections, he started forgetting things so the family decided to pull him out of the race and I was asked to come home from Metro Manila to take his place.

It was only after the elections when we found out that he had brain tumor.

I won the race against our mayor for 27 years by the skin of my teeth after a three-week barnstorming of the villages in my town.

A month after I became Mayor, my father passed away.

I had no experience in politics so I had to rely on my basic instincts as a farm boy to identify the needs of our people, find answers and most important, implement the solutions.

Water, Light, Roads, Livelihood and Peace or WLRLP were the priorities I identified following consultations with my townmates.

With very little funds, I initiated the building of Level II water systems in the villages, most of which are still working today, connected the barangays to the power lines, opened roads leading to the barangays and production areas using the old bulldozer and grader of the town and introduced livelihood programs which included building small water impounding systems where people could get water for their ricefields and grow fish.

(Until today, those small water impoundings are still being used by farmers in my town, 25 years after I built them.)

I strengthened Muslim-Christian relations by driving away a group of landgrabbers which had occupied lands owned by a Bangsamoro tribe in a village beside the marsh.

I penetrated even the critical Bangsamoro village of Gaunan at the height of the conflict, introduced agriculture projects, built a road and water system and established the first complete elementary school.

The town of M’lang was acclaimed as a Greenest and Cleanest Municipality of the Philippines, later winning the Hall of Fame, through the efforts of an industrious Ilocano councilor, the late Pedro Marcelo.

This was when I started the dream of building an airport in my town which was finally started when I became Governor but mothballed for nine years after my term ended because of petty politics.

(Today, work has resumed on the airport which already has a runway and terminal building, a project which would best exemplify visionary leadership.)

What captured the imagination of my people were my efforts to establish peace and order in my town which saw me leading police and military teams pursuing kidnapers deep into the marshes.

I was young and reckless, so they say, and I enjoyed joining armed encounters with armed groups in the periphery of the Liguasan Marsh.

I was ambushed but survived.

In less than three years, people saw a massive transformation of my town and they called me “The Miracle Man of Mlang.”

Three years later, the people of North Cotabato voted for me as their new Governor, a position which I served for nine years, winning over an undefeated Congressman with a funding of only P800,000.

Those were the days when elections were won by simply presenting a good and viable program explained during public rallies where speeches, not dancing, were what convinced people to vote for their leaders.

Governance is really simple and never complicated for as long as the leader thinks of the welfare and well-being of his people, not his personal interest.

So, what was my remarkable accomplishment in the less than 3 years that I was Mayor of M’lang?

I established the fact that governance need not be complicated if the leader understands the basic needs of his people, finds solutions and most of all, delivers.

Simplified governance achieved through constant consultations with the constituents would later be replicated nationwide through the Bottom-Up Planning Process adopted by the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

#GovernanceIsCommonSense!

#KungGustoMaramingParaan!

(Thanks to social activist and artist Nicholas Tanedo Wijangco, the modern Katipunero, for the artwork attached to this article.)