Barangay Power

A couple of years ago I started jogging because a regular medical checkup told me that I needed to live a healthier lifestyle and I needed to start exercising once again. I chose jogging because it was the cheapest form of physical activity I could afford and I could do it by my lonesome and on my own time.

It was during one of those runs that I started formulating the theory that we regular folk should give more attention to our barangay officials.

We have been focusing too much on the mayors and city council, expecting them to step up and either solve the chronic problems of our towns and cities or come up with ways to improve the quality of our lives that we fail to see that a properly empowered and decent barangay captain can make our big difference where the fate of our communities are involved.

I thought about this while running because every time I go out, I always notice something that needs to be fixed and I wonder if things would be so bad if the places I was passing through had barangay officials that were more responsible and proactive.

Barangay officials should be our first line of defense against almost all the little problems that have been plaguing are communities for so long that they have grown up into the big and seemingly unsolvable problems of today.

Take the problem of sidewalk vendors and the numerous building code violations that destroy the sanctity of our sidewalks. Imagine how our sidewalks and roadsides would look like if we only had barangay officials who did their jobs firmly and consistently from day one.

If vendors would be warned and asked to secure the proper permits within days of setting up shop or camp on our sidewalks, they wouldn't be able to overrun those areas that they practically own after squatting on it for a couple of months without being warned.

If homeowners and shopkeepers were only confronted by barangay officials when they are just starting to violate barangay or city ordinances when their garages, carinderias, repair shops, or micro-enterprises start spilling out into the sidewalks or streets, the pervading squatter mentality that make our communities so ugly would be nipped in the bud.

Barangay officials who do their job should be able to stop sidewalks from being carved up by car owners who think nothing of making sidewalks hell for the elderly and persons with disabilities just because their driveway has to look nice. They should be able to stop illegal parking practices before the homeowners who have decided that they can buy a car because they can always park their brand-new-but-garageless vehicle on the sidewalk and/or curb.

Anything that is build right on riverbanks and esteros wouldn't get built if the community had alert barangay officials that could step in and stop the construction or elevate the case to the appropriate city officials before things become permanent or out of hand.

If you come to think of it, mayors and councilors can't do much for our immediate communities. Taking care of our community is the job of barangay officials and in an ideal world the state of your community should determine what kind of barangay officials you are either blessed or cursed with. The problem is that nobody seems to know that. It is not only the barangay officials who seem to be oblivious of their primary responsibilities, the voters in those communities seem to be as ignorant as well so they don't expect anything at all.

I must admit that before this eureka moment while jogging along the highway, I am one of those who never expected anything from his barangay officials. I don't even think I participated in the barangay elections because I didn't think they mattered in the great scheme of things. The position of barangay captain was reserved for those who couldn't garner enough votes to be in the city council. It was only much later did I realize that if everybody only did their jobs properly, our immediate communities would need competent and hardworking barangay captains more than it would need city council officials. In that ideal world, a city or town's next crop of mayoral candidates should come from its best barangay captains where their performance can be judged with a cursory visit to the communities they have been responsible for to see if those candidates are truly worthy of bigger challenges.

Those of us who have been clamoring for change may have to look a little closer for a change. Instead of blaming the mayors, governors, senators, and presidents, I think it's time we take a closer and more critical look at our immediate communities and collectively decide to demand more from our barangay officials.

Those of us who are whining and pining for a better country might have to ask ourselves if we can take care of the communities we live or work in first.*

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