Gold standard for politicos

These days, getting voted into office at a young age is no longer novel or remarkable. The last elections produced a mini-bumper crop of politicos in their early 20s—the youngest being the new mayor of Bagac in Bataan, who is only 21.

Thus, it’s easy to overlook the significant fact that when Jesse Robredo was elected mayor of Naga City in 1988 at 29, he was then the youngest mayor in the country. Robredo, who died four years to the day last Thursday in a plane accident, was a fresh blast of air in the Camarines politics then dominated by his kingpin relatives, the Villafuertes.

When Robredo won the mayor’s seat, his uncle Luis Villafuerte would learn to his chagrin that the young man had no intention of being a lackey to the family’s brand of politics. Only three years later, the uncle had become a sworn political foe of his nephew, such that when Robredo was eventually appointed interior secretary by President Benigno Aquino III, Villafuerte led the opposition to his confirmation at the Commission on Appointments. Robredo died with his appointment twice bypassed.

Robredo was no callow leader when he took over Naga’s city hall. An engineering graduate, he had stints in the finance and logistics sections of San Miguel Corp. and was program director of the Bicol River Basin Development Program—an agency that allowed him to take a grassroots look at social development problems and opportunities in three Bicol provinces—before he became mayor. What he did upon assuming office was notable enough to be memorialized in the citation that accompanied the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Good Governance that he received in 2000—the first Filipino local government leader to earn the honor:

“Robredo began with a strike against patronage. He introduced a merit-based system of hiring and promotion and reorganized city employees on the basis of aptitude and competence. He then moved against local vice lords, ridding Naga of gambling and smut. Next, he relocated the bus and jeepney terminals outside the city center, ending gridlock and spurring new enterprises at the city’s edge. In partnership with business, he revitalized Naga’s economy. Public revenues rose and by 1990 Naga was a first-class city again. Robredo’s constituents took heart and reelected him.”

In all, Robredo would serve six terms as Naga mayor, beloved by his constituents as much for the efficiency and transparency of the city hall under his watch, as for the simplicity of his life and his rapport with ordinary folk. Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros recounted more than once how he saw the mayor in his trademark slippers “up and about one gray dawn after a violent storm, shoveling mud from the doorstep of a church all by his lonesome.”

De Quiros called Robredo’s brand of governance “tsinelas politics”—a government that worked for the people’s empowerment by, for instance, institutionalizing ease and transparency in government transactions to allow the public greater stake in them. Red tape? Naga put out a Citizen’s Charter in 2000 that listed government services with corresponding time frames, thus giving the public a concrete basis for demanding accountability from government staff; it eventually became a national law, the Anti-Red-Tape Act. A landmark “Empowerment Ordinance” paved the way for the establishment of the Naga City People’s Council, which gave sectoral representatives and ordinary people the chance to participate in planning for and running the city.

Peace and order? Naga under Robredo would become one of two cities consistently cited by the National Police Commission for its outstanding track record, the other being Davao. Robredo attributed that success to an inclusive approach. “Our strategy is to appeal to the people’s [sense of] civic duty, and not to strike fear [in them],” he said in an interview with Newsbreak’s Miriam Grace Go in 2002.

From third-class status in 1988 when Robredo took over, Naga became a regional powerhouse, with an annual growth rate of 6.5 percent, among the highest nationwide. It would garner some 140 local and international awards, among them Asiaweek’s citation in 1999 as one of the “Most Improved Cities in Asia.”

Robredo worked to instill the same ethic at the Department of the Interior and Local Government, when he required all local government units to open their transactions and operations to the people. Sadly, he died before his “tsinelas politics” could take greater national root. He is much missed these days—the gold standard for public servants, and what it means to be a good Filipino citizen.