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The COVID-19 pandemic has increased poverty and inequality in the country and has laid bare the weaknesses of the public health and social protection systems, educational systems as well as provision of livelihoods and employment to Filipinos. This has led to catastrophic consequences for workers and their families, the majority of whom are in the informal sector and many of whom are women.
Yet, two years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been no fundamental change in the government’s developmental strategy to address these systemic weaknesses and prioritize the care programs and services that our people need. Emerging from the worst period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country is slowly returning to semblance of ‘normalcy’ (or what is also referred to as ‘the new normal’). The dominant mindset of policymakers, especially those managing the economic levers, is that it is back to business as usual, where the private sector is seen as the main driver of development and with the government providing the ‘enabling policy environment.’ Here, the premise flows from the conventional notion that that the gains of GDP growth will ‘trickle down’ to benefit the poor and socially excluded groups. This premise, which has underpinned development policy across decades should have been long discredited, as the country, even during periods of relatively high growth, continued to be saddled with significant levels of poverty, thereby fueling inequality across various quality of life dimensions. The urgent challenge therefore to the new administration is to promote the realization of our people’s economic, social, and political rights—elusive goals thus far, with a view to ensuring their dignity and well-being as well as care for and protect our environment. Furthermore, citizens have a right to influence and shape public policies and programs, especially as these affect them, their families and communities and thereby actively engage in actions to claim their rights. It is within this perspective that this People’s Scorecard is undertaken. In general, the availability of policy or legal framework had the highest mean score among the indicators, at 2.50. Understandably, support from national agencies and the issuance of national action plans, including SDG strategies which are also considered policies and frameworks, followed the ranking with mean scores of 1.88 and 1.74, respectively. We believe, however, that budget should be a distinct indicator and de-linked from frameworks, policies, and programs. This is because there have been too many times where good and even progressive frameworks, plans, projects, and activities (PPAs) are inadequately funded by the national budget and in some cases, not at all. The widespread phenomenon of ‘unfunded mandates’ which refers to laws that are not budgeted through public investments also speak to this reality. As such, it can be argued that many of the progressive laws and PPAs are generally good on paper, but are not substantially realized due to inadequate financing, among other things. In the middle ground are the indicators on government actions, particularly on implementation at the national and local levels, with mean scores of 1.58 and 1.22, respectively. Below average and very low scores go to spaces for citizens’ participation and actual engagement of civil society, with mean score of 1.06. Partnerships between government, civil society and stakeholders follow with a mean score of 0.58. The lowest and most dismal scores are for indicators related to monitoring, public awareness, and transparency. The indicators Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting as well as Public Awareness and Capacity Building, both had mean scores of 0.37. Transparency and Accountability was at the bottom of the list with a 0.36 mean score. |
