JUMPSTART. Xavier University’s Governance and Leadership Institute director Dr Dixon Yasay serves as one of the resource speakers at the orientation for newly-elected mayors. Supplied photo.
Report by Wilson J Hormeguera
More than 300 newly-minted mayors from different parts of the Philippines drew together for the Newly-elected Officials (NEO) program orientation organized by the Local Government Academy of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) earlier this month.
“To create public value is to ensure that the local bureaucracy has the commitment and competence to translate executive-legislative agenda,” said Dr Dixon Yasay, director of Xavier University’s Governance and Leadership Institute (GLI), who served as one of the resource speakers at the orientation.
According to DILG, the NEO program was crafted to strengthen their commitment to come up with a harmonized and holistic capacity development delivery mechanism for the local government units.
The said program is designed to “(1) to create a cadre of development-oriented officials (newly-minted and re-elected) who are able to translate local development road map that promotes local economic development in the communities and (2) to improve the institutional and individual capacities of newly-elected officials to prepare and monitor term-based development plans that are based on local development needs and are correlated with national development goals.”
The participating mayors completed their First 100 Days Calendar and their respective development commitment agenda, with the guidance of governance experts and practitioners.
Yasay also discussed how to manage the local bureaucracy and how to establish strong partnership with the Local Sanggunian (Council).
He emphasized that the authority of the Local Sanggunian is not only to enact ordinances but also, and more importantly, to engage with the constituency particularly those at the grassroots level, balancing between genuine listening and downloading of resources.
Besides Yasay, CDO Mayor Oscar Moreno also shared his governance jouney as one of the orientation speakers. ∎