5

Distinction between democratic governance and 'participatory democracy'

Citizenry as Sovereign Body Politic; and Government's role and accountability as servant, facilitator and leader in a working democracy

People,s collective self-empowerment through 'building-blocks' synergies

Human development and social harmony

Governing to serve the legitimate social, economic, political and cultural rights of the people

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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Respective Roles of NGOs and POs in the PSE Framework and Process

By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

Prof. Reyes is one of the foremost champions in the Philippines of the serious study and conscious application of the synergism principle on various fields of human concern.  He taught synergism-oriented subjects of Applied Cosmic Anthropology, the doctoral program of Asian Social Institute (ASI) in Manila.

This is excerpted from Part One of the book, The People’s Self-Empowerment (PSE) Challenge, which has been published only in a pilot edition in 1996 with foreword essays by Bishop Julio Xavier Labayen, the UNDP’s Cesar Liporada, and SanibLakas Foundation co-founder Joydee C. Robledo.  It was circulated in a very limited number of copies.

THE TERM NON-GOVERNMENT organization (NGO) broadly refers to any private unitary or complex organization, as distinguished from government instrumentalities or quasi-government entities. But the Philippine cause-oriented community prefers to use the term "people's organization" (PO) to refer to a private organization composed of mass members and embodying the will of these members or of their specific section of the population; within this community, the term NGO more specifically applies to task-oriented or service-oriented private institutions or agencies.

In this context, healthy POs partake in embodying the people's self-empowerment process, specifically their self-organization, self-articulation and self-mobilization. No super-PO now exists to claim a monopoly of embodying the people's self-empowerment. Within a proliferation of POs with identical or overlapping constituency bases, the degree of partaking is proportional to the size of the membership and magnitude of empowerment achieved by the entire membership of each PO. On the other hand, the NGOs serve this self-empowerment process or specific aspects of this process. Empowerment is attained by the people, embodied by all their healthy POs taken together, and served by the NGOs.

Components Of the Empowerment Process

In the gradual and complex process of the people's self-empowerment, the following components should be adequately considered, addressed, and served:
A. Promotion and enhancement of keen perception, sharp analysis and critical thinking, the capability to learn from direct and vicarious experiences, and the ethic of acting according to one's own convictions and rational thinking. This should be developed in individuals, and organizations are potent mechanisms for developing these among their members.

However, organizations are also potential adversaries of independent analysis and critical thinking, especially if their practice and policies emphasize conformism and discipline. An organization should develop these basic capabilities of perception and analysis in each member.

The organization's unity and discipline are better served if its individual members are constantly validating by their own free and critical evaluation the analyses and policies of the organization and are undoubtedly free to express and discuss dissenting views and even to leave the organization in the extreme cases of irreconcilability of views. Conformism due to formal or informal pressures is a common basis for artificial, and therefore flabby, unity.

Especially in this period of information gluts, everyone needs an enhanced capacity for sharp analysis and critical thinking to keep us from drowning under a flood of data. Even if we assume that we would not drown in specific information, it is better to be of profound wisdom than to be a "walking encyclopedia."

B. Promotion and enhancement of basic civic and socio-political literacy and consciousness. The people should acquire a working familiarity with society and its dynamic relationship to the needs and capabilities of the individual citizens, and groupings. This familiarity should not be simplistic: the mechanical attachment of memorized labels to phenomena in society should not be mistaken for a deep understanding of these phenomena.

Frameworks of study that reduce persons into two-dimensional stereotypes of economic or political categories should be replaced with frameworks that take commensurate account of individuality and combine the science of political economy with sociology, anthropology, political science and the humanities. Political development of the people is very essential, but basic sociology would teach all of us that there are other dimensions of human existence -- like scientific thinking, artistic creativity and appreciation, healthy family life, love for nature, etc. -- that also need our attention. These, in turn, enhance the people's individual and collective capabilities.

C. Promotion and enhancement of comprehension of, or at least a working familiarity with, the current issues. These issues should have a balance between universal interests of the citizenry in general and those of specific sections of the population (like sectoral or sub-sectoral issues); general areas of concern should not be left completely to the exclusive attention of officers and secretariat staffs of umbrella organizations.

D. Development of the people's self-organization, by developing organizations that respond to real needs and are healthy and active-- optimizing their respective members' synergism of the mind, of the heart (will), and of the muscle (action). Only such healthy organizations can empower the people through their own synergism.
We have observed quite a number of organizations whose members, and even some formal leaders, have behaved or have been treated as nominal members.

Such organizations can not really enhance and embody the empowerment of their members, much less of their respective constituency or mass bases. Some can even disempower people, especially natural leaders, if they develop the habit of waiting for instructions "from above" before acting or speaking out. Leading activists and advocates must develop and fully use the healthy channels of earnest discussions in their effort to influence the thinking and action of the members.

Authoritarian or conspiratorial maneuvers and short-cuts that turn the organizations' decision-making bodies into "rubberstamps" of the "most correct" positions are destructive of the people's self-organization and are to be avoided.

Self-righteousness on the part of any of the leaders can be a very heavy baggage to be borne by any organization and it goes against the grain of serving the people's self-empowerment process. Moreover, the ultimate basis of self-righteousness is generally feeble, flawed or even self-imagined.

E. Promotion and enhancement of the people's effective self-articulation of their problems and advocacies. The "citizens' media rights," namely their right to freely seek, receive and widely disseminate information and opinions, should be effectively asserted. Members of the commercial mass media should be pressured and reformed to serve increasingly better these rights.

Advocacy communicators must sharpen their sense of history and sense of focus and purpose, in short, their orientation consciousness, and constantly develop their skills. Organizations should address in earnest the need to increase the effective impact of their mass communication work, and should be prepared to commit quality time and adequate material resources for this imperative.

There are many advocacy communicators who are too busy to be available for training, but their hours are being spent on hectic cycles of work with doubtful public impact. There are many organizations who would refuse to spend funds on the needed training and would, ironically, prefer to keep mechanically spending so much on media projects that do not effectively carry their messages to the multitudes.

There have to be changes in the thinking patterns and in the habits of such organizations and individuals to make possible significant improvements on the effectiveness and public impact of their advocacy mass communication work.
The mass communication work of the entities that undertake to speak for the advocacies of the people should effectively address and convince the tens of millions of the country's population (the makers of our history). Mechanical and muddledheaded work in this area, including the perceived patterns of "organized soliloquy" and other manifestations of self-righteousness, must be replaced by constant, creative and intimate two-way "conversation" with those tens of millions.

F. Promotion of the citizens' capability to attain collective economic upliftment and general welfare through various cooperatives, collective self-help and parallel mechanisms, and also through the development of community-based resource management systems for sustainable development. The last point necessarily includes the citizens' capability to preserve and defend the environment against further assaults from ecology-destructive profiteers. This also necessarily respects the inherent right of citizens, especially the indigenous peoples, to resist further assaults on native culture.

There should be no illusions held or spread that cooperative mechanisms can fundamentally solve the problem of mass and systemic poverty, but for whatever little can be achieved even if temporarily for the people's benefit from these arrangements, these should be encouraged and pursued in earnest. There should be no illusions, either, that community-based resource management systems can be put in place without powerful resistance from enclaves whose vested interests would be jeopardized. But realization of this fact should not result in demoralization or defeatism.

G. Promotion of the citizens' capability to assert their rights as taxpayers and as consumers, and to effectively seek redress against cases, and moreso trends, of overpriced, unavailable and/or low-quality commodities and services. This should be felt the most in terms of better quality performance of such public utilities as transportation, communication, electric power and water supply. It is the height of powerlessness when the people have to endure for long and without redress the inept performance of monopolies in air transportation, power generation, telephone service, and water supply.

Consumerist movements and groups may highlight the role of foreign firms and institutions but they may not avoid the responsibility of addressing the issues of brownouts, ineffective garbage collection and disposal systems, flooding, inept airline and telephone services, and dry faucets.

Aside from their right to efficient public utility services, the people should also develop the power to assert their right to adequate and high-quality education and health-care. Education, which should be enjoyed as a right and not as a privilege, must redound to the empowerment of the people, not to the molding of the youth into a nation of internationally-competitive dollar-earning robots, prostitutes and criminals. Health care should be appropriate, affordable, adequate and accessible.

Disempowerment of the average individual citizen due to ignorance or disease ultimately contributes to the overall collective powerlessness of the people.
Citizens have the inherent tight to the availment of justice, to due process. As taxpayers they have the inherent right to be effectively represented in the legislation process. The American Revolution against the English monarchy was waged because the people of the colonies were being subjected to taxation without representation.

The citizens' effective representation in legislation should be felt most clearly in the matter of enacting tax measures and in passing appropriation (budget) measures.
Artificial representation structures (especially the district seats occupied generally by the trapos of the local elite clans and elite groups) should be thoroughly criticized and supplanted. Unconstitutional measures such as automatic appropriation for foreign and government-guaranteed debts should likewise be effectively opposed. Effective representation would also require the full enjoyment of the citizens' right to be informed about all matters of public consequence, the full enjoyment of their right to freedom of expression, of association and of assembly, and the full development of the principle of public accountability.

H. Promotion of networking on various lines/scales (geographical, sectoral, subsectoral and specialized lines, etc.) for mutual enlightenment and cooperation. For this networking to be undertaken well, we have to be ready to deal, even if at first uncomfortably, with persons or groups who differ from us politically. Contrary to the apparent premise of the behavior of certain people and groups, the world is not hopelessly atomized into antagonistic small groups with fundamentally competing "political tendencies."

I. Attainment of the people's collective capability to provide tangible relief and/or alleviation on acute survival and socio-economic problems/difficulties. Specific beneficiaries of this would include victims of disasters/calamities, the elderly, the disabled, and the destitute. While the people's tax money should be made to finance fully the relief and alleviation projects and services needed by substantial sections of the population, the people, through their POs and NGOs, should develop their own capabilities for quick and sustained response to various urgent necessities.

J. Generation and development of research, technical, technological, material and other forms of assistance for letters A to H. This is the focus of highly-specialized service-oriented NGOs and committees of POs. Care should be taken so as not to foster overdependence on any single source or on any small set of sources of such resources. Self-empowerment is not attained by the people if for an overextended period their organizations and institutions depend on, and are heavily influenced (or, worse, even commanded) by external donors, especially foreign sources no matter how friendly these may be.

For any and all of the above, a community can at least double the capability of the people comprising it with the liberation of the womenfolk from the additional disempowering effects of patriarchal structures and culture. The women make up roughly half the population of average communities, and their full empowerment along with the menfolk and the full optimization of their capabilities greatly increase the total amount of human energy that can be synergized.

To ensure the sustainability of social change as a historical process, we must spare no effort in the full development of succeeding generations of wholesome, honorable, intelligent and productive citizens. Therefore, a genuine movement for emancipation and full development of the human person and human society would surely focus adequate abiding attention and actual efforts on the care and well-rounded development of the youth and children. This bears strong implications on the responsibility of servants of the people as family members, especially as parents.

This also mandates sectoral POs to support the work of specialized institutions focused on children and the elderly, and to have their own children- youth- and elderly-oriented programs and mechanisms. The danger of being absolutely engrossed in pro-people work, especially if pursued within the framework of "proxy empowerment," is in harboring illusions in favor of sacrificing our children's opportunities for a wholesome childhood or youth or family life, along with everything else, just to advance the movement to that long-awaited future date called "victory."

The effects on the children, on the youth, on entire families, cannot be undone even if that date were to come sooner than later. Even ifthat date were to come in just a few years, the ruined childhood or youth, the families broken or almost broken, will surely have permanent negative effects on these children and youth, and ultimately in the quality of the society that they will become part of.

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