“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them”
So goes a frightening inscription on the “one ring” or the ring of power in the monumental novel of J.R.R Tolkien which was made into a movie trilogy. I remember watching the Fellowship of the Ring more than 20 years ago and the phrase is one that has haunted me since. Strangely, I find parallelism between the story of the Lord of the Rings and the situation of our local government units. In Tolkien’s novel, the Dark Lord Sauron forged rings of power which he distributed to the different kings. The kings were, however all deceived because one ring was forged by Sauron to rule over the other rings in order for him to dominate and conquer the worlds of men, elves, and dwarves. Is this not the story of the local governments in the Philippines? The Local Government Code of 1991 promised full autonomy to the local government units in order to de-centralize the government and give the LGUs the power to generate and utilise their own funds. Were they not “deceived” by the promise of “full autonomy” and devolution when the national government was not able not let go of its “control” over the LGUs? In fact there have been numerous issues that reached the Supreme Court on the question of of what is meant by devolution or autonomy or power of supervision by the president. Section 25 of the Local Government Code states that “the President shall exercise supervision” over the LGUs. “Supervision” but not control. The Supreme Court made the distinction: “supervision means overseeing or the power or authority of an officer to see that subordinate officers perform their duties. If the latter fail or neglect to fulfill them, the former may take such action or step as prescribed by law to make them perform their duties. Control, on the other hand, means the power of an officer to alter or modify or nullify or set aside what a subordinate officer ha[s] done in the performance of his duties and to substitute the judgment of the former for that of the latter.” (G.R. 125350, December 3, 2002)
In reality, LGUs, in order to comply with certain conditions of international institutions or provide certain indicators, are continuously bombarded by the executive with memoranda and orders to undertake this and that in some instances, with a promise of incentives or awards. Does it not reek of Sauron’s desire to control those kings he has bestowed with rings? It took close to 30 years to expose this through the Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark case of Mandanas and Garcia. In the famous case, the SC basically said that the National Government has deprived LGUs of their rightful share in internal revenue taxes because those collected by the Bureau of Customs among others, were not included in the computation of the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), now National Tax Allotment (NTA). This prompted former president Duterte to issue an executive order for the implementation of full devolution. Not only were LGUs deprived of their correct share, they were also mistrusted because not all functions were devolved to them, which is the spirit of the Local Government Code. Ruling in Mandanas and the subsequent issuance by the president only show that Local Autonomy is indeed very similar to the Lord of the Rings story: not only that it is fiction but that the Lord of the Rings really does not wish to share his power. It is a contentious issue but also a formidable challenge we hopefully can overcome.
