Everybody who is going for Cordillera autonomy is quite upbeat regarding the expected early passage of the enabling bill into an organic law. The quest, however, does not end there. It might even be compared to a beginning.
The next stage which is the most important thing is how to get it ratified by the people. A lot of people have to be convinced who in two instances rejected the concept of autonomy.
As of now, the campaign effort for its ratification is quite generic, the IEC (Information and Education Campaign) being conducted by government officers and employees. Perhaps there is no other way than to rely on the region’s bureaucracy as to opt for a new organization would take time to form it and would need a huge amount of money. The big question is, will the IEC be effective?
Perhaps, if handled in a different way, not the way it was done in the past two attempts that failed to get the Cordillera people’s nod.
Since the pro-autonomy people are saying that almost all the leaders of the region’s provinces are for regional self-rule, then the key is to motivate them to whip their supporters into campaigning and voting for autonomy when the time comes. How to motivate them should be easy. Just tell them about the billions of pesos that will be flowing into this region when autonomy will be approved. It will practically be them, the local politicians who will be managing that money.
And when we say government or political management, it means a lot of that money will be going into their ( the local politicians’) pockets. For many, this would be better than that money being corrupted by national leaders and politicians—which means we will not benefit from it.
On the other hand, if the billions of subsidy will be funneled to this region, a big part of it will be implemented as government projects even if a big part of it will find its way into the pockets of local politicians. A part of that corrupted portion will also be invested here and will create some opportunities for everybody as it trickles down the usual economic routes.
That would be better than nothing, which is the situation now.**