Antipolo City – notorious tarpaulin mania
Campaign time for local candidates officially kicked off last 26 March. By then, it left very limited space for tarpaulins or posters to be posted since the national candidates already occupied nearly every conceivable area to display those ‘Great Image” smiles and punch-lines over their tarps. There ought to be something wrong with a split rule on when to begin campaign. And what’s this intervening no ‘campaign day’ on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday?
That is not even to speak of earlier posters, streamers, or tarpaulins hang just everywhere even before COMELEC allows them until one day the Supreme Court totally abandoned any claim of premature campaigning. From both ends of the process, the City is adorned with a colorful array of posters and tarpaulins that makes it difficult to know which candidates are running where.
The confusion soon settles down when local candidates go on foot or on wheels making rounds. Not few candidates are making their debuts – new emerging players in the dirty political field called local politics. The old politicians, ‘trapos’ call them that, literally covered the entire visual horizon with just their own posters or tarps. Perhaps, we can say that Antipolo City is a tarp-covered city in this corner of the region.
What’s in a poster or tarp anyway?
Offhand, posters do not replace accomplishments. They cease to carry their usual patronizing appeal. Totally, they cease to exude meaning or exhibit anything of value to the reported 315,661 registered voters of Antipolo City. In other words, if the incumbents did a good job, what need is there to over-advertise as if no one in the City knows who you are and in which positions you are running. To my mind, it does not make sense at all.
On the other hand, some space should have been reserved for upcoming candidates. COMELEC always speaks of common posters area when in fact barangay halls do not permit space for candidates their rivals. This is crazy. Barangay captains are overzealous even over-jealous to have to see posters or tarpaulins of candidates not belonging to their party. But Almonte always talks of ‘levelling the playing field’. How could it be?
This time, the picture or the poster in that specific context no longer paints a thousand words. More so with those incumbents who did not do their work to the satisfaction of the electorate who put them in their office. This is what makes this upcoming election cycle one imbued with much moral and social significance.
The next three years in our collective life as Antipolenos should be one decided upon platforms being offered not those fake, ‘plastic’ smiles and motherhood punch-lines printed over their posters or tarpaulins. I contend that voters in Antipolo City ought to have learned few lessons in our voting history and pattern.
As always, we should base our decision beyond mere personal choice but on some scientific gauge such as knowing the person based on his academic and professional background, record of achievements, and platform of government. Just these three criteria would suffice in determining fitness to the job. It is hoped, this time around, there would be no ‘midnight sale’ of votes or local politics would have turned out to be a ‘multi-million investment’. In any event, whose money are all these anyway but from the taxpayers?
The new emerging faces in local politics, to my mind, offer the best alternative if only voters let their decision count by holding them sacred. Votes should not be for sale! Otherwise, vice-presidentiable Edu Manzano would have been right as when he said “kung gusto mong manalo, doon ka sa Antipolo tumakbo”. What does that thought really imply?
I hate to think that the votes of the Antipolo electorate are within the ‘commerce of men’, men with entirely quite an unethical design if only to win. This time, just for this time, let us think of our collective future. Let us go for those who can offer a no-nonsense three-year program for the poor. After all, some 50% to 60% of the population of Antipolo are the C,D,E classes in our Great Social Divide. As your congressional candidate in the First District, I will be a pair of hand helping reduce poverty, my reason for running. Support this cause!*
____________
*PRIMER PAGUNURAN is running for Congress in the 1st District of Antipolo City
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Are the Magdalos the modern-day eunuchs?
Are the Magdalos the modern day eunuchs?
Leading scholars already illumined the road to understanding public administration and governance. Some of these include Shafritz and Russell, Caiden, Jena, Waldo, Kjaer, Simon, Lane, and Wilson on the one end and Carino, Corpuz, De Guzman, De Lima, Valera and the like on the other. Their worldviews sought to show the balance in theory and practice in the field of public administration, said to be ‘a watershed of various disciplines’ (Dr. Co). Quickly, let us survey some of these works:
Shafritz. Are bureaucrats really perceived as ‘angels of mercy’ or constitute the modern version of ‘medieval knights in shining armor’? Altruistically, citizens do expect instant service from their governments, more so in times of disaster. In the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Shafritiz felt that the barbarous attack wounded the country, its people, even its psyche – ‘a crime against the Constitution and the United States’, no less. Like the Shakespearean Hamlet, governments are in a constant flurry but whatever they do or do not do is ‘public policy’ (Shafritz 2000: 8). Further, public policy and public administration are two sides of the same coin – “one decides, the other does”. On the other hand, public interest is the universal label that wraps policies and programs that political actors advocate according to Shafritz.
But for E. Pendleton Herring, laws are necessarily the product of ‘legislative compromise’ thus explaining why they are vague and wanting in definition. Still, however, he thinks it the task of bureaucrat to broker between various special interests.
Shafritz did not fail to subscribe to the Lincolnian understanding (Abraham Lincoln) of the legitimate object of government in saying that ‘public administration is doing collectively that which cannot be so well done individually’, hence, the ingredient of so-called community spirit. As former head of the Business Permits & Licensing Office of the City of Antipolo, I find it interesting to learn that the Code of Hammurabi (in ancient Babylonia) is the classic example of public administration from the point of view of regulation. It predates that thing of ‘license to operate a business’ in local municipalities or cities.
Note also that the whole concept of a welfare state is founded on a notion of redistribution (shifting wealth or benefits from one segment of population to another) or as the Harvard Business School so defines so simplistically, “poverty is the uneven distribution of wealth”. More strikingly however, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1851 had this said (as invective against all governments): “To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the virtue”. It is Shafritz that theorized the interdisciplinary nature of public administration.
Wilson. Woodrow Wilson, thought to be the patron saint of American public administration is the archetypical idealist but his League of Nations failed to gain support. He advocated for merit system rather than spoils system in the civil service. With this theme, he came up with the notion of a ‘politics-administration dichotomy’ in his time (1919). In his article, The Study of Administration, Wilson explains that the object of administrative study is to discover, “first, what government can properly and successfully do, and second, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy”.
Moreover, Wilson says that it is a field of business. “It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics” which means simply that it rises above mere technical detail to ‘permanent truths of political progress’.
Waldo. It was Dwight Waldo who decried in 1975 that ‘public administration suffers from an identity crisis, having expanded its periphery without a unifying center’. But he posits public administration to be a legitimate academic field. For this leading theorist, the goals of government are: public affairs and service delivery. Some examples of public affairs are election, lawmaking, peace and order, justice system, and taxation. The term commons refers to oceans, seas, territory, natural resources and possibly air space that have to be protected. Service delivery refers to such concerns as in the area of education, health, agriculture, clean environment, job, infrastructure and transport.
Caiden. Gerald Caiden traced roots of prejudice against public administration in ignorance and this makes interesting point. Rightly so, the public remains in the outside, looking in. For Caiden, the following are the peculiarities of public administration: 1) the individual cannot escape communal authority, 2) it can compel obedience upon citizens, 3) public services have priority over others, 4) it provides each citizen a wide range of public services, 5) it is directly responsible to political leadership, 6) it makes judgment of performance difficult, and 7) it prescribes public morality. One major point raised by Caiden is the fact that some governments provide extensive public services while some simply contract them out and government simply becomes a superintending public authority. In the case of the Philippines, much like US, public services are largely privately owned.
Caiden mentioned in his article of Price’s four estates in public policy making, namely: 1) scientific – discovering truth, 2) professional – applying science to practical affairs, and 3) administrative – using wide variety of disciplines and 4) political – making decisions based on compromise. It was Simon however in mid-1940s who proposed the decision making approach in public administration. In mid-1950s however, Waldo set out to provide his own view of public administration as “one type of rational human cooperation calculated to realize given desired goals with minimum loss to the realization of other desired goals”.
Caiden exhaustively discussed the shifting base of public administration, expanding fast as it does to meet contemporary needs. No wonder then that today, a wide range of diverse disciplines – mathematics, anthropology, linguistics, biochemistry and the like makes the public domain an open territory (Caiden, p 21).
Jena. Saroj Kumar Jena made distinction between the integral school and the managerial school in viewing public administration. The integral, the proponents of which include White, Wilson, Dimock, and McQueen, regards the activities of the executive, legislative and judicial as public administration whereas the managerial (held by Gullick, Simon, Messon and Fayol) only those of the executive branch. Corollarily, Alexander Hamilton hammered more nails by saying that public administration is the executive function of government. Sharp on dichotomies, Jena also distinguished between private and public administration (by similarities and differences), public administration as science or art, the political and non-political approach to the study of public administration, formal or informal organization, advantages and disadvantages of the principle of hierarchy and how it differs with span of control, difference between centralization and decentralization (by merits and demerits)
Varela. For Amelia Varela, public administration is culture-bound but in espousing about Filipino cultural values such as amor propio, delicadeza, hiya, utang na loob, pakikisama which are contained in her concepts of personalism, familism, and particularism might like be confusing. It is so because the question on whether there is a Filipino culture remains a never-ending debate owing to the fact that there is a single human nature. In other words, other nationalities surely also exhibit these so-called traits typical only of Filipinos.
REFLECTION:
The eunuchs in ancient Greece were portrayed as the ‘public administrators of choice” and are deemed to have raised the level of ethics or standards for public officials at the time. This extended to Rome as well in their adoption of most of Greek science and culture. On reflection, the basis for this worldview is rather commonsensical since the eunuchs, castrated as they are, are not expected to take advantage of the wives of rulers. For them to have been considered as loyal could be rather ambiguous. They are males with their external sex organs amputated and it therefore follows that they would rather be effective and loyal administrators since in the first place, they too are slaves or the servant class most trusted by rulers of ancient Syria, Persia, China as well as Rome.
This student tried to ask if there is a modern-day version of the eunuchs in the Philippines and hinted that they may be the peemayers within bureaucracy who assume juicy posts in the government – from one presidency to another. In fact, at every electoral cycle, they are fielding members from their own ‘class’. The Magdalos joining this forthcoming 2010 is a proof of this point. Unlike Sweden where lampooning public officials has been a traditional sport, no one in the Philippines or no mechanism openly allows that public records be made open to the public. So who or what can police our politicians?
Sadly, our realpolitik has yet to do away with the notion of King’s largesse which led to the notion of representative government. Up until today, the devil is in the details in our brand of Filipino politics. What approximates the ‘traditional big city political machine’ in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the Great Depression of “snow buttons” are the ‘health insurance cards’ that Malacanang gives to as many patronizing voters as possible when election nears. In a situation where a perceptibly ‘bloated bureaucracy’ (although it is more graphically top-heavy) no longer produce an economic ‘basket of goods and services’ but rather, simply subcontract or contract them to private sector entities, it challenges reflection that no one attempted to reverse the scheme of things. There are enough entities in either the military or civilian government that can build homes for the homeless than these public projects to have to be subcontracted to private industries.
Truth is, we import our drugs or medicines than produce them. We import even our rice than benefit from our own local produce. Our roads, bridges, highways are constructed by private enterprises. Security guards manning most government offices are from private security establishments. Maintenance of our aircrafts and navy vessels through purchases siphons off so much money from government coffers. There ought to be a desired point where some of public goods and services are produced by government itself and some produced for the government by private businesses. For it should not be the business of private entities to produce these public services. The level of privatization in government has probably exceeded some desired level of self-reliance – that of government itself producing goods and services.
There are several cases in point that could be cited. Why are our expressways (both NLEX and SLEX) privatized through profiting concessionaires? Why are our water and services likewise privatized by Manila Water Company and our electricity by MERALCO? No single specific office in government builds our dams, airports, national highways, seaports, piers, harbors, et cetera. A deep vacuum is theoretically present in Philippine public administration, come to think of it.
In the Philippine civil service system, the healthy concept of ‘equal opportunity employer’ is yet to achieve a level of success until patronage politics is done away with. The prevailing pattern of recruitment in Congress alone elicits certain disturbing facts. Most positions in the congressional staff are relatives, families, or friends of the Members of the House of Representatives. Jose Almonte in his book, “We must level the playing field” proposed a “new business culture” (Almonte 2007: 182) for the Philippine economy in the twenty-first century. It will be one that ‘shelters no cartels, no monopolies’. It would appear that so much privatization is in fact injurious to public interest such as monopolies in telecommunications, banking, cement, agri-business, and interisland shipping. Thus, the Ramos government leveled the playing field by guaranteeing equality of opportunity for every business newcomer. Sadly, the prevailing mood is not about changed.
The case of the World Bank road projects being administered by the DPWH points to the observations that contracts are actually being rigged and the officialdom is accused of trying to siphon off kickbacks or commission as a precondition to the approval of the projects. Thus, running corporate RP is a case of “We must reform – or perish” as correctly raised by Almonte.
The Wilsonian prescription in the light of the Maguindanao massacre is inapplicable. Firstly, it is not proper for government to put Maguindanao under a state of martial law, however true it will only last for 60 days. Nor will government truly succeed to thwart, at the least possible cost, the threat of massive arms proliferation in the area. Fact is, the government will end up employing too many troops in the area, exacerbate the problem it aims to solve, and inflict more economic uncertainty in all the neighboring provinces, cities or municipalities. It seems that the initiative is being taken away from the local governments concerned by a regime of too much Marxian intoxication. Says F.M. Marx : “it is a systematic ordering of affairs and the calculated use of resources aimed at making those things happen, which we want to happen”. As Almonte suggested, in public administration, “we need to professionalize the bureaucracy; decentralize political power, and empower local communities” and perhaps, Proclamation 1959 placing Maguindanao under martial totally obliterated this piece of wisdom.
Leading scholars already illumined the road to understanding public administration and governance. Some of these include Shafritz and Russell, Caiden, Jena, Waldo, Kjaer, Simon, Lane, and Wilson on the one end and Carino, Corpuz, De Guzman, De Lima, Valera and the like on the other. Their worldviews sought to show the balance in theory and practice in the field of public administration, said to be ‘a watershed of various disciplines’ (Dr. Co). Quickly, let us survey some of these works:
Shafritz. Are bureaucrats really perceived as ‘angels of mercy’ or constitute the modern version of ‘medieval knights in shining armor’? Altruistically, citizens do expect instant service from their governments, more so in times of disaster. In the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Shafritiz felt that the barbarous attack wounded the country, its people, even its psyche – ‘a crime against the Constitution and the United States’, no less. Like the Shakespearean Hamlet, governments are in a constant flurry but whatever they do or do not do is ‘public policy’ (Shafritz 2000: 8). Further, public policy and public administration are two sides of the same coin – “one decides, the other does”. On the other hand, public interest is the universal label that wraps policies and programs that political actors advocate according to Shafritz.
But for E. Pendleton Herring, laws are necessarily the product of ‘legislative compromise’ thus explaining why they are vague and wanting in definition. Still, however, he thinks it the task of bureaucrat to broker between various special interests.
Shafritz did not fail to subscribe to the Lincolnian understanding (Abraham Lincoln) of the legitimate object of government in saying that ‘public administration is doing collectively that which cannot be so well done individually’, hence, the ingredient of so-called community spirit. As former head of the Business Permits & Licensing Office of the City of Antipolo, I find it interesting to learn that the Code of Hammurabi (in ancient Babylonia) is the classic example of public administration from the point of view of regulation. It predates that thing of ‘license to operate a business’ in local municipalities or cities.
Note also that the whole concept of a welfare state is founded on a notion of redistribution (shifting wealth or benefits from one segment of population to another) or as the Harvard Business School so defines so simplistically, “poverty is the uneven distribution of wealth”. More strikingly however, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1851 had this said (as invective against all governments): “To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the virtue”. It is Shafritz that theorized the interdisciplinary nature of public administration.
Wilson. Woodrow Wilson, thought to be the patron saint of American public administration is the archetypical idealist but his League of Nations failed to gain support. He advocated for merit system rather than spoils system in the civil service. With this theme, he came up with the notion of a ‘politics-administration dichotomy’ in his time (1919). In his article, The Study of Administration, Wilson explains that the object of administrative study is to discover, “first, what government can properly and successfully do, and second, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or of energy”.
Moreover, Wilson says that it is a field of business. “It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics” which means simply that it rises above mere technical detail to ‘permanent truths of political progress’.
Waldo. It was Dwight Waldo who decried in 1975 that ‘public administration suffers from an identity crisis, having expanded its periphery without a unifying center’. But he posits public administration to be a legitimate academic field. For this leading theorist, the goals of government are: public affairs and service delivery. Some examples of public affairs are election, lawmaking, peace and order, justice system, and taxation. The term commons refers to oceans, seas, territory, natural resources and possibly air space that have to be protected. Service delivery refers to such concerns as in the area of education, health, agriculture, clean environment, job, infrastructure and transport.
Caiden. Gerald Caiden traced roots of prejudice against public administration in ignorance and this makes interesting point. Rightly so, the public remains in the outside, looking in. For Caiden, the following are the peculiarities of public administration: 1) the individual cannot escape communal authority, 2) it can compel obedience upon citizens, 3) public services have priority over others, 4) it provides each citizen a wide range of public services, 5) it is directly responsible to political leadership, 6) it makes judgment of performance difficult, and 7) it prescribes public morality. One major point raised by Caiden is the fact that some governments provide extensive public services while some simply contract them out and government simply becomes a superintending public authority. In the case of the Philippines, much like US, public services are largely privately owned.
Caiden mentioned in his article of Price’s four estates in public policy making, namely: 1) scientific – discovering truth, 2) professional – applying science to practical affairs, and 3) administrative – using wide variety of disciplines and 4) political – making decisions based on compromise. It was Simon however in mid-1940s who proposed the decision making approach in public administration. In mid-1950s however, Waldo set out to provide his own view of public administration as “one type of rational human cooperation calculated to realize given desired goals with minimum loss to the realization of other desired goals”.
Caiden exhaustively discussed the shifting base of public administration, expanding fast as it does to meet contemporary needs. No wonder then that today, a wide range of diverse disciplines – mathematics, anthropology, linguistics, biochemistry and the like makes the public domain an open territory (Caiden, p 21).
Jena. Saroj Kumar Jena made distinction between the integral school and the managerial school in viewing public administration. The integral, the proponents of which include White, Wilson, Dimock, and McQueen, regards the activities of the executive, legislative and judicial as public administration whereas the managerial (held by Gullick, Simon, Messon and Fayol) only those of the executive branch. Corollarily, Alexander Hamilton hammered more nails by saying that public administration is the executive function of government. Sharp on dichotomies, Jena also distinguished between private and public administration (by similarities and differences), public administration as science or art, the political and non-political approach to the study of public administration, formal or informal organization, advantages and disadvantages of the principle of hierarchy and how it differs with span of control, difference between centralization and decentralization (by merits and demerits)
Varela. For Amelia Varela, public administration is culture-bound but in espousing about Filipino cultural values such as amor propio, delicadeza, hiya, utang na loob, pakikisama which are contained in her concepts of personalism, familism, and particularism might like be confusing. It is so because the question on whether there is a Filipino culture remains a never-ending debate owing to the fact that there is a single human nature. In other words, other nationalities surely also exhibit these so-called traits typical only of Filipinos.
REFLECTION:
The eunuchs in ancient Greece were portrayed as the ‘public administrators of choice” and are deemed to have raised the level of ethics or standards for public officials at the time. This extended to Rome as well in their adoption of most of Greek science and culture. On reflection, the basis for this worldview is rather commonsensical since the eunuchs, castrated as they are, are not expected to take advantage of the wives of rulers. For them to have been considered as loyal could be rather ambiguous. They are males with their external sex organs amputated and it therefore follows that they would rather be effective and loyal administrators since in the first place, they too are slaves or the servant class most trusted by rulers of ancient Syria, Persia, China as well as Rome.
This student tried to ask if there is a modern-day version of the eunuchs in the Philippines and hinted that they may be the peemayers within bureaucracy who assume juicy posts in the government – from one presidency to another. In fact, at every electoral cycle, they are fielding members from their own ‘class’. The Magdalos joining this forthcoming 2010 is a proof of this point. Unlike Sweden where lampooning public officials has been a traditional sport, no one in the Philippines or no mechanism openly allows that public records be made open to the public. So who or what can police our politicians?
Sadly, our realpolitik has yet to do away with the notion of King’s largesse which led to the notion of representative government. Up until today, the devil is in the details in our brand of Filipino politics. What approximates the ‘traditional big city political machine’ in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the Great Depression of “snow buttons” are the ‘health insurance cards’ that Malacanang gives to as many patronizing voters as possible when election nears. In a situation where a perceptibly ‘bloated bureaucracy’ (although it is more graphically top-heavy) no longer produce an economic ‘basket of goods and services’ but rather, simply subcontract or contract them to private sector entities, it challenges reflection that no one attempted to reverse the scheme of things. There are enough entities in either the military or civilian government that can build homes for the homeless than these public projects to have to be subcontracted to private industries.
Truth is, we import our drugs or medicines than produce them. We import even our rice than benefit from our own local produce. Our roads, bridges, highways are constructed by private enterprises. Security guards manning most government offices are from private security establishments. Maintenance of our aircrafts and navy vessels through purchases siphons off so much money from government coffers. There ought to be a desired point where some of public goods and services are produced by government itself and some produced for the government by private businesses. For it should not be the business of private entities to produce these public services. The level of privatization in government has probably exceeded some desired level of self-reliance – that of government itself producing goods and services.
There are several cases in point that could be cited. Why are our expressways (both NLEX and SLEX) privatized through profiting concessionaires? Why are our water and services likewise privatized by Manila Water Company and our electricity by MERALCO? No single specific office in government builds our dams, airports, national highways, seaports, piers, harbors, et cetera. A deep vacuum is theoretically present in Philippine public administration, come to think of it.
In the Philippine civil service system, the healthy concept of ‘equal opportunity employer’ is yet to achieve a level of success until patronage politics is done away with. The prevailing pattern of recruitment in Congress alone elicits certain disturbing facts. Most positions in the congressional staff are relatives, families, or friends of the Members of the House of Representatives. Jose Almonte in his book, “We must level the playing field” proposed a “new business culture” (Almonte 2007: 182) for the Philippine economy in the twenty-first century. It will be one that ‘shelters no cartels, no monopolies’. It would appear that so much privatization is in fact injurious to public interest such as monopolies in telecommunications, banking, cement, agri-business, and interisland shipping. Thus, the Ramos government leveled the playing field by guaranteeing equality of opportunity for every business newcomer. Sadly, the prevailing mood is not about changed.
The case of the World Bank road projects being administered by the DPWH points to the observations that contracts are actually being rigged and the officialdom is accused of trying to siphon off kickbacks or commission as a precondition to the approval of the projects. Thus, running corporate RP is a case of “We must reform – or perish” as correctly raised by Almonte.
The Wilsonian prescription in the light of the Maguindanao massacre is inapplicable. Firstly, it is not proper for government to put Maguindanao under a state of martial law, however true it will only last for 60 days. Nor will government truly succeed to thwart, at the least possible cost, the threat of massive arms proliferation in the area. Fact is, the government will end up employing too many troops in the area, exacerbate the problem it aims to solve, and inflict more economic uncertainty in all the neighboring provinces, cities or municipalities. It seems that the initiative is being taken away from the local governments concerned by a regime of too much Marxian intoxication. Says F.M. Marx : “it is a systematic ordering of affairs and the calculated use of resources aimed at making those things happen, which we want to happen”. As Almonte suggested, in public administration, “we need to professionalize the bureaucracy; decentralize political power, and empower local communities” and perhaps, Proclamation 1959 placing Maguindanao under martial totally obliterated this piece of wisdom.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Profile: Primer Pagunuran
PRIMER PAGUNURAN
First District, Antipolo City
Primer Pagunuran, 52, is a resident of Barangay San Isidro, Antipolo City since the mid 80’s in a low-cost housing project. His father is retired enlisted personnel of the AFP and his mother a former teacher. Both parents who hail from Piat, Cagayan received national awards for exemplary parenthood. Still living, aged 94 and 83, respectively, they are a constant inspiration for excellence and servant leadership.
Pagunuran graduated his elementary and high school from the public school system. Earning his BA Philosophy from the University of Santo Tomas in 1977, he did teach courses in sociology, psychology, business English at the UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts while pursuing his MA Philosophy from the University of the Philippines in Diliman.
Pagunuran trained as Probationary Ensign in the Philippine Navy to finish his Naval Officers Qualification Course “Charlie” in 1978 as a source of commission in the Reserve Force, AFP. He has a brother, a President of Philippine Military Academy Class of 1982 who died in an accident. As if to soften the impact it had to his father, Pagunuran joined the service in 1982 and served the military and defense establishment until 1992. He held positions as Protocol Officer to then Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile and Secretary Logistics Staff to the late Commodore Domingo Calajate of the AFP Logistics Command. He left a promising military career in favor of marriage and career shift at the Philippine Legislature.
In Congress, he was Chief-of-Staff Officer to Representatives Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado (now Vice-Governor of Bulacan), Prospero Pichay, Jr. (now LWUA head), Augusto Syjuco (now TESDA head), Arthur Celeste, and Manuel Andaya aside from having served Representatives Romeo Jalosjos, the late Narciso Monfort, and Hortensia Starke. As congressional staff, he became officer and director of the Congressional Staff Association and Congress Mountaineering Club, and . He built a reputation as vocal fighter of the rights and privileges of the congressional staff. Today, those efforts bore fruits with now an approved rata for all chiefs of staff of Congress, upgraded salary grades for congressional staff, and more liberal grant of allowances and bonuses for all House employees.
Pagunuran accepted call of the City Government of Antipolo to streamline the Business Permits and Licensing Office during the term of the late Mayor Victor Sumulong. Introducing new system, procedure and practice in business taxation, he succeeded to raise the level of collection of taxes, fees, charges to unprecedented levels (more than 100%) compared to the past regimes. It is this template and benchmark that are still in use today. As then BPLO head, he has dialogued with the market vendors, stall owners, and corporate investors in the City. He also attended dialogues or fora with owners, proprietors and administrators of private schools in Antipolo and the Federation of Homeowners Associations of Antipolo City, Inc. as well as other individuals or groups with legitimate concerns as their resource speaker. He also served as Deputy to the City Legal Officer thus exposing him to the multifarious concerns of the city constituents and the barangays.
In terms of relevant community work, he has organized and became the chairman of the United Multi-Purpose Cooperative that still exists today. He has launched Medical Missions by the Klinikang Bayan Foundation with volunteer group of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and health workers doing this work for charity. Thus, children, pregnant women, aging senior citizens, adults, and people with various illnesses were properly cared for courtesy of pharmaceutical companies supplying the medicines, drugs, and medical equipment.
Throughout his college days, Pagunuran has always been a working student at the same time receiving pecuniary benefits as scholar-recipient of the UST Rector’s Grant and the UP Grants-in-Aid, in his undergraduate and graduate studies, respectively. He was University Scholar and College Scholar at UP Diliman while he was awarded twice a Certificate of Appreciation by UST as campus journal editor. Similarly, he received Certificate of Appreciation from the Civil Service Commission as essay writer and a Golden Leadership Award from the Philippine Experimental and Educational Society for exemplary public government service.
Because of his well-rounded grasp of overall legislative work that spans Congresses (starting with the 9th on to the 14th Congress), Pagunuran was one of Philippine Delegates to the Microsoft Government Leaders Conference held in Washington, USA; London, England; Berne, Switzerland; Stockholm, Sweden; and an Executive Briefing Seminar at Lexmark Corporation in Rosyth, Scotland. The First District of Antipolo City would then be in good hands from one who knows where to tap all possible funding sources, both local and foreign, toward the delivery of goods and services.
Against this backdrop, Pagunuran’s legislative agenda or platform may be encapsulated in the following eight-point agenda in the context of a broad range of legislations that would promote economic, social and cultural priorities (housing, food, health, education, work) as they affect the poor, children, women, students, laborers, workers, adults, the aged, and the handicapped, to wit::
- pro-democracy
- pro-life
- pro-education
- pro-health
- pro-equal opportunity employment
- pro-accountability
- pro-business
- pro-development
As a present scholar in public administration and governance at UP Diliman, Pagunuran stands at the most vantage point seeing how people, events, and worldviews come into play from both the theoretical frame of thought as well as the practical side of things when human realities stare him to the face. One’s keen sense of humanity upon every man which Pagunuran possesses will guide the way through these challenges.
Pagunuran is married to Maritess N. Arana-Pagunuran (UP dissertation student) with whom he has three lovely children named Meryl Alyssa Chloe (UST BS Biology freshman), Karl Andre Weil, (La Salle high school), and Niels Kaj Jerne (La Salle high school). God willing, Pagunuran vows to make a difference in public service.
SLOGAN: “KUNG HINDI NGAYON, KAILAN PA?”
First District, Antipolo City
Primer Pagunuran, 52, is a resident of Barangay San Isidro, Antipolo City since the mid 80’s in a low-cost housing project. His father is retired enlisted personnel of the AFP and his mother a former teacher. Both parents who hail from Piat, Cagayan received national awards for exemplary parenthood. Still living, aged 94 and 83, respectively, they are a constant inspiration for excellence and servant leadership.
Pagunuran graduated his elementary and high school from the public school system. Earning his BA Philosophy from the University of Santo Tomas in 1977, he did teach courses in sociology, psychology, business English at the UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts while pursuing his MA Philosophy from the University of the Philippines in Diliman.
Pagunuran trained as Probationary Ensign in the Philippine Navy to finish his Naval Officers Qualification Course “Charlie” in 1978 as a source of commission in the Reserve Force, AFP. He has a brother, a President of Philippine Military Academy Class of 1982 who died in an accident. As if to soften the impact it had to his father, Pagunuran joined the service in 1982 and served the military and defense establishment until 1992. He held positions as Protocol Officer to then Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile and Secretary Logistics Staff to the late Commodore Domingo Calajate of the AFP Logistics Command. He left a promising military career in favor of marriage and career shift at the Philippine Legislature.
In Congress, he was Chief-of-Staff Officer to Representatives Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado (now Vice-Governor of Bulacan), Prospero Pichay, Jr. (now LWUA head), Augusto Syjuco (now TESDA head), Arthur Celeste, and Manuel Andaya aside from having served Representatives Romeo Jalosjos, the late Narciso Monfort, and Hortensia Starke. As congressional staff, he became officer and director of the Congressional Staff Association and Congress Mountaineering Club, and . He built a reputation as vocal fighter of the rights and privileges of the congressional staff. Today, those efforts bore fruits with now an approved rata for all chiefs of staff of Congress, upgraded salary grades for congressional staff, and more liberal grant of allowances and bonuses for all House employees.
Pagunuran accepted call of the City Government of Antipolo to streamline the Business Permits and Licensing Office during the term of the late Mayor Victor Sumulong. Introducing new system, procedure and practice in business taxation, he succeeded to raise the level of collection of taxes, fees, charges to unprecedented levels (more than 100%) compared to the past regimes. It is this template and benchmark that are still in use today. As then BPLO head, he has dialogued with the market vendors, stall owners, and corporate investors in the City. He also attended dialogues or fora with owners, proprietors and administrators of private schools in Antipolo and the Federation of Homeowners Associations of Antipolo City, Inc. as well as other individuals or groups with legitimate concerns as their resource speaker. He also served as Deputy to the City Legal Officer thus exposing him to the multifarious concerns of the city constituents and the barangays.
In terms of relevant community work, he has organized and became the chairman of the United Multi-Purpose Cooperative that still exists today. He has launched Medical Missions by the Klinikang Bayan Foundation with volunteer group of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and health workers doing this work for charity. Thus, children, pregnant women, aging senior citizens, adults, and people with various illnesses were properly cared for courtesy of pharmaceutical companies supplying the medicines, drugs, and medical equipment.
Throughout his college days, Pagunuran has always been a working student at the same time receiving pecuniary benefits as scholar-recipient of the UST Rector’s Grant and the UP Grants-in-Aid, in his undergraduate and graduate studies, respectively. He was University Scholar and College Scholar at UP Diliman while he was awarded twice a Certificate of Appreciation by UST as campus journal editor. Similarly, he received Certificate of Appreciation from the Civil Service Commission as essay writer and a Golden Leadership Award from the Philippine Experimental and Educational Society for exemplary public government service.
Because of his well-rounded grasp of overall legislative work that spans Congresses (starting with the 9th on to the 14th Congress), Pagunuran was one of Philippine Delegates to the Microsoft Government Leaders Conference held in Washington, USA; London, England; Berne, Switzerland; Stockholm, Sweden; and an Executive Briefing Seminar at Lexmark Corporation in Rosyth, Scotland. The First District of Antipolo City would then be in good hands from one who knows where to tap all possible funding sources, both local and foreign, toward the delivery of goods and services.
Against this backdrop, Pagunuran’s legislative agenda or platform may be encapsulated in the following eight-point agenda in the context of a broad range of legislations that would promote economic, social and cultural priorities (housing, food, health, education, work) as they affect the poor, children, women, students, laborers, workers, adults, the aged, and the handicapped, to wit::
- pro-democracy
- pro-life
- pro-education
- pro-health
- pro-equal opportunity employment
- pro-accountability
- pro-business
- pro-development
As a present scholar in public administration and governance at UP Diliman, Pagunuran stands at the most vantage point seeing how people, events, and worldviews come into play from both the theoretical frame of thought as well as the practical side of things when human realities stare him to the face. One’s keen sense of humanity upon every man which Pagunuran possesses will guide the way through these challenges.
Pagunuran is married to Maritess N. Arana-Pagunuran (UP dissertation student) with whom he has three lovely children named Meryl Alyssa Chloe (UST BS Biology freshman), Karl Andre Weil, (La Salle high school), and Niels Kaj Jerne (La Salle high school). God willing, Pagunuran vows to make a difference in public service.
SLOGAN: “KUNG HINDI NGAYON, KAILAN PA?”
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