Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines

A Paper Presented during the Local Peace and Security Assembly

in Tagbilaran City on 23 August 2007

Secretary Ronnie Puno, Your Excellencies of the Roman Catholic Church, fellow Governors, distinguished Congressmen and participants of this assembly:

At the outset, I would like to thank the convenors – the National Security Council and the Department of the Interior and Local Government – for holding this Local Peace and Security Assembly in the City of Tagbilaran, and assigning me to speak on Peace and Development Initiatives by the LGUs on the fight against the inter-locking problems of poverty and insurgency.

On this context, allow me to present the Bohol Response to the Insurgency Challenge through our Poverty Reduction for Peace and Development.

BACKGROUNDER

As a backgrounder, Bohol is the 10^th largest island in the country, located in Central Visayas. The province comprises of one city, 47 municipalities and 1,109 barangays. It has three congressional districts with a land area of 4,117 square kilometers and a population of about 1.2 million.

It is categorized as a first class province. But it is dependent more on the internal revenue allotment. For instance, Bohol has a budget of P793.6 million this year, with P728.8 million coming from the internal revenue allotment. However, we use Bohol’s 20 percent Development Fund amounting to P145.6 million this year to leverage for Official Development Assistance, national government agencies, non-government organizations and other sources of outside funding for poverty reduction under the convergence strategy. This leveraging strategy has been undertaken by Bohol since 2002.

INTERLOCKING PROBLEMS OF

POVERTY AND INSURGENCY

What brought about the program was the gnawing widespread poverty before my term as governor of Bohol which started on 30 June 2001. The poverty incidence was 53.6 percent in the year 2000.

The situation, therefore, was so ripe in Karl Marx’ exhortation: “Workers of the world, unite. We have nothing to lose but our poverty chain.”

In fact, Bohol was No. 16 at that time among the country’s poorest provinces, popularly known as Club 20.

During that year, using the issue of poverty, the insurgency inroads were terrifying: 305 out of the 1,109 barangays – or 30 percent thereof – were in various stages of insurgency: influenced, infiltrated or threatened. There were also 283 armed men in four fronts in the province, making Bohol the hotbed of insurgency in Central and Eastern Visayas.

The alarming poverty situation and the disturbing threats of ideology-based conflicts to the economic potentials of the province prompted the local leaders and the stakeholders to draft a peace and development framework that is centered on poverty reduction with the goals of not only removing Bohol from Club 20 but also reducing poverty incidence by 50% in 2015 under our Millennium Development Goals (MDG) commitment.

Along with our development thrust, the poverty reduction program is focused on attaining peace and security in the province.

Hence, we created the Bohol Poverty Reduction Management Office (BPRMO) by Executive Order No. 10 S. 2001, the year when we started our governance, and later on, strengthened by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan legislation. We created also the Bohol Employment and Placement Office (BEPO) which has deployed about 2,474 Boholano overseas workers and some 1,859 domestic workers as well as employed 1,494 students in summer jobs.

BEPO has also facilitated the processing of 4,709 passports by the Department of Foreign Affairs, 2,305 licenses by the Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC), 965 franchises by the Land Transportation Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB), 34,617 clearances by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and authentication of 1,880 birth and marriage certificates by the National Statistics Office (NSO).

We also created the Bohol Tourism Office for the tourism development of the province, which with agriculture, is one of our two main economic drivers, and the Center for Culture and the Arts Development (CCAD) for poverty reduction through the arts and cultural heritage.

Under our building on the accomplishments of our predecessors policy, we completed the Let’s Help Bohol (LHB) program for poverty reduction – which is funded by the Heifer Project International – from three to seven towns. We expanded the program with an additional 12 municipalities or a total of 135 people’s organizations (POs) with an aggregate of 7,650 families involved in the carabao, goat and chicken dispersal program.

The Let’s Help Bohol Program is unique in the sense that there is a passing on of produce carabao, goat and chicken from the original beneficiaries to those involved in the program within the people’s organization-covered communities concerned.

The original cost for 1,297 heads of carabaos distributed to as many families, 1,103 heads of goats to 301 families and 1,496 heads of chicken to 150 families amounted to P18,923,800.

As pre-arranged, the recipient families passed-on/paid back carabaos, goat and chickens offspring, that if valued, would now amount to P6,987,500. A livestock mortuary program also replaced animals that died of accidents, disease or other causes not due to negligence.

The success of LHB inspired the birth of the Livelihood Integrated for Food and Family Enhancement (LIFFE) that covers 12 more towns. Aside from carabaos, goats and chickens, LIFFE also dispersed swine and ducks. It had initial funding of P3,616,000 to procure 152 heads of carabao, 520 heads of goats, 18 heads of swine, 500 heads of ducks and 1,020 heads of chicken. It involves 25 POs and 2,069 family members.

LIFFE also has training and soft loan components for the member-POs.

It was the consensus of the Bohol leaders from the start that military intervention alone would not solve the communist insurgency problem.

Thus we decided to integrate and redirect our programs toward poverty reduction and push harder for the implementation of major ODA-funded projects such as the P392-million KALAHI-CIDSS and the P230-million Agrarian Reform Community Development Phase 2 funded by World Bank; the P124.1-million Belgian Integrated Agrarian Reform Support Program (BIARSP) for rural infrastructure, livelihood and job generation, education and public health; and the P260.5-million AusAID-funded Philippines-Australia Community Approach Program (PACAP), among others.

The local equity counterparts are being shared by the barangays, municipalities, congressmen, NGOs and the Provincial Government to ensure that the projects can be realized.

But there was a major breakthrough when Secretary Meng Jian Zhu, concurrent chairman of the Jiangxi Province Standing Communist Party Committee of the People’s Republic of China visited Bohol for the Jiangxi-Bohol Sisterhood Agreement arranged by Mr. Carlos Chan, now Philippine Special Envoy to China. In a media interview, Mr. Meng declared that China is not supporting the communist insurgency in the Philippines, especially Bohol, the putative sister province of China.

That pronouncement has weakened the CPP-NDF-NPA struggle in Bohol.

Conflicts borne from poverty, deprivation of basic goods and services, lack of employment and livelihood opportunities, injustice and human rights violations have to be addressed by the government and civil society.

Employing the strategies of alliance building, convergence, community organizing, capability building and reinvigorating the bayanihan spirit or self-reliance, the poverty reduction program for peace and development of Bohol has resulted to something beyond our expectations.

The collaborative approach in waging a “war” versus the evils of communism gave birth to Team Bohol… where all government units and agencies shared and took part by integrating in their respective plans, peace-promoting and conflict-sensitive programs and projects. They were also supported by the private sector and even by the churches of various denominations as part of our strategy on building alliances and bridges in our poverty reduction and anti-insurgency drives.

Team Bohol – with then Tagbilaran Bishop Leopoldo Tumulak, now military vicar-general, and then Col. Juanito Gomez, 302^nd Infantry Brigade commander and now a Major General commanding the 4^th Infantry Division based in Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija – ultimately became the vehicle for peace and eventual progress in the province with the implementation of effective innovations that any other peace and order council can initiate if the collective passion to achieve a culture of peace is present. Today, Team Bohol is our key player in sustaining Bohol’s peace and development.

For instance, community workers were assigned in conflict affected areas and funds were channeled for development to make people in the far-flung barangays feel the presence of the government in their communities. For this poverty reduction program, we have sourced out various foreign-funded programs and other projects, all with the end in view of poverty reduction, with counterparts from our local funding of about P100 million, mostly from our 20% Development Fund from 2002 up to the present.

Now allow me to show the peculiar correlation in Bohol of poverty and insurgency:

Firstly, In 2005, the United Nations Development Programme Philippines 2005 Human Development Index Report declared that Bohol was out from Club 20 and occupied the 41^st position in the higher level of provinces. In fact, Bohol was the No. 2 best performing province in poverty reduction which was reduced from 52.6 percent to 29.2 percent. There was a sharp reduction, correspondingly, of the CPP-NDF-NPA barangays from 305 to 46. The armed NPA members went down from 283 in 2001 to 64 in 2005. The Central and Eastern Visayas headquarters of the CPP-NPA in Bohol was transferred to Leyte.

Secondly, In 2006, the National Statistics Coordination Board of NEDA reported that Bohol went up higher in the stratum of highly performing provinces in poverty reduction to the extent that it has moved further upwards to the 52^nd position. Correspondingly, the number of NPA armed men went down to 42 and the number of barangays under the insurgents’ sway was reduced further from 42 to 36. And three out of four fronts in the province were dismantled, according to the assessment of the military.

Thirdly, today the Bohol Poverty Reduction Management Office is now in 284 barangays working to improve the quality of life of our people, in tandem with the other LGUs and the communities concerned, with cooperatives as the main vehicle the people in the community decided, as part of their empowerment, to use in the fight against poverty. Consequently, the number of barangays, either influenced, infiltrated or threatened has been reduced further to 24.

Our people woke up from their “sleep” with insurgents after realizing that the government is indeed sincere in helping them out of poverty and that the military has a humane face in the campaign. The barangay folks in the affected areas now refuse to give sanctuary to the insurgents who used their barangays as bases of operations in the past.

STRATEGIES

Apart from reducing the poverty situation in Bohol, we employed specific strategies to contain the insurgency problem.

The special operations team (SOT) approach of the military in its counter-insurgency campaign was modified in Bohol and is dubbed as “SOT: Bohol Model”. In tandem with the SOT operators, civilian community organizers were deployed in conflict areas to organize residents into cooperatives. Together with the soldiers, they immersed in the communities to facilitate the needs of the barangay folks in their livelihood projects, support the information campaigns and medical, surgical and dental civic action program of the SOT operators. This way, trust and confidence was easily established among the people.

Other innovative undertakings are the following:

The Provincial Peace and Order Council monthly civic action to bring the government closer to the people. The PPOC conducts medical, dental and surgical missions in conflict areas delivering basic health services to the people therein as well as provide farm inputs, clothing, fruit tree seedlings and supplemental feeding for indigent children and distribution of rice to the people in the areas covered. For every CIVAC, about 1,500 to 2,000 beneficiaries are being serviced. During the occasion, the military and civilian authorities have conducted also their joint information drives to win the hearts, the minds and the stomachs of the people.
The Local Peace Forum (LPF) implemented by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP). The LPF has been the venue for dialogues to thresh out local issues and concerns raised by leftist groups and the government side. The Bishop of the Diocese of Tagbilaran chairs the LPF while the governor co-chairs the forum. The Provincial Government provides the funding for the LPF’s administrative and operational requirements.
Bohol is presently one of the few provinces where a Local Monitoring Board (LMB) on the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHIHL) has been installed. Aside from monitoring, intensive information dissemination is being conducted regularly in coordination with the Public Information Patrol (PIP) of the military. Target audiences are students, out-of-school youths and other barangay folks. The continuous info campaigns are also aimed at educating and informing communities on updates on the stalled peace talks.
The rehabilitation and reintegration of rebel returnees who have become our partners for reforms – kauban sa reporma (KRs). To date, there are 185 accounted rebel returnees. Sixty of them surrendered even in the absence of an amnesty proclamation. They have been organized into the Tuburan Settlers Cooperative in Ubay, the Bohol Composite Farmers Association which will soon venture into an oil palm plantation, and the Rajah Sikatuna Multi-Purpose Cooperative in the military reservation in Carmen also in farming like the Ubay co-op.
The KRs themselves are active members in the Speakers’ Bureau and share their experiences during pulong-pulongs to make people aware of the hardships and difficulties of the life of a red fighter and the deceptive motives of the local communist group.
A Quick Response Team (QRT) is regularly dispatched to conflict-affected and disaster-stricken areas to assess the extent of damage and provide the necessary emergency assistance to the families of victims ranging from food, medicines, temporary shelter, clothing and even coffins when there are casualties.
The deployment of Fact-Finding Missions immediately after receipt of reports of insurgency-related incidents that involve government troops, the CPP-NPA-NDF, their supporters or neutral groups. Composed of PPOC members coming from both government and non-government institutions, the fact-finding team gathers first-hand information on incidents related to internal security operations (ISO) such as encounters, the so-called “extra-judicial killings”, alleged abuses of government troopers and all forms of human rights violations. The factual information the team report to me are vital for the proper actions to be taken, either for socio-economic interventions or policy-direction. The conduct of such activity would set the facts straight to prevent the enemy from exploiting the event for any propaganda purpose.
The Legal Assistance for Effective Law Enforcement Program (LAELEP) to provide assistance to the military, police, CAFGUs, tanods, fish wardens and other law enforcers in the prosecution of cases against violators and for the defense of the aforecited law enforcers when they are charged of offenses related to the performance of their duties. The Provincial Government is providing P450,000 to secure the services of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Bohol Chapter for the purpose; and
The Provincial Government is providing food support for the military, police and CAFGUs in their operation. Similarly, the other LGUs are also supporting them.

With the established peaceful environment, Bohol’s economy has greatly improved. The province has consistently ranked as a major tourist destination in the country and No. 1 agricultural producer in Central Visayas of rice, coconut, oil palm, rootcrops, fish, seaweeds for carrageenan production and livestock.

With the support of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Bohol benefited immensely from the multi-billion peso-mega projects for the development of its roads and bridges, energy, irrigation facilities, roro ports and soon, the Panglao Bohol Iternational Airport Development Project.

The successful poverty reduction for peace and development in Bohol has been validated by the following awards:

ISO 14001 from TUV of Germany for Bohol’s sustained environment program.
The Konrad Adenauer Medal of Excellence from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Local Government Development Foundation for the most highly performing provincial government.
The Local Governance Leadership Award (LGLA) as outstanding governor for steering Bohol into a highly performing province from the Philippine Senate, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Development Academy of the Philippines, Asian Institute of Management, University of the Philippines and the De La Salle University.
Award for Continuing Excellence (ACE), the highest award and a rare distinction that the Gawad Galing Pook Foundation confers only to a select and honored few – for Bohol’s sustainable program in eco-tourism, enforcement of coastal and marine laws, and the barangay livestock program, as well as the Trailblazing Program Award and the Special Citation on Local Peace Initiatives by the same award-giving body for its Poverty Reduction Program for Peace and Development. Today, Bohol is in the Gawad Galing Pook Hall of Fame.
Golden Heart Award given by the HomeReach Foundation based in New York for the various humanitarian civic actions in conflict areas and bringing the government closer to the people, as well as sponsoring and coordinating the various humanitarian missions, notably the Malacañang-supported cataract operations benefiting some 17,000 patients and the Philippine heart Center open heart surgeries performed at the Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital in Tagbilaran City which gave a new lease of life to 82 patients.
Kalakbay Awards from the Department of Tourism for being the No. 1 Tourism Destination and the outstanding Provincial Tourism Council; and
One of our most valued awards, the Most Outstanding Provincial Peace and Order Council of 2004 given by the National Peace and Order Council and the National Police Commission.
There were 22 other awards of distinction that the province obtained.

Likewise, it has attracted the convergence of global funders including various churches to support our development activities.

All this could be summed up in more economic benefits for the people of Bohol in terms of income, job opportunities, good services, better infrastructures and an improved quality of life.

Most of all, we have given our constituents, the Boholanos, what they have always longed for: a peaceful environment, ripe for economic growth and development.

Finally, the Bohol experience can easily be replicated by the other provinces in the country, especially the rich ones whose leaders have the political will and commitment for poverty alleviation, peace and development.

Thank you and Mabuhay!