The Gamboa Candidacy: Creation of an Enabling Environment

The historic rise of a well-organized aggrupation of independent candidates is unprecedented. Their resource margins are limited but their existence is clearly a concrete “definition” of a people’s social conscience, a yearning for change, a public outcry which, in the first place, served as the solid bedrock from which the ten independent candidates erected their catapulting principles against the two formidable well-endowed bulldozers.

Headed by Vice Mayorable Wilson “Jun” Gamboa, Jr., he expounded their war cry, in a forum spearheaded by the Bacolod Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Inc. last March 17, 2022 held at the St. John’s Institute Activity Center. He explained that their existence is a defining moment for Bacolod City, if given their chances to serve. As repeatedly propounded by him, he has one clear vision, a blueprint by way of policies and ordinances on how to seal the permeable regulatory structure that turned a local government like Bacolod into an employment mill that generated the billion-peso “JO industrial complex” rather than a local government that is an “enabler of a climate or environment so conducive for businesses to thrive and expand.”

The number and quality of employment to be generated by this Gamboa principled by-word “enabling environment” could feasibly outnumber by three-folds the said co-terminus JO populace, more than enough to increase local aggregate demand and even integrate these JOs themselves to end their dependence on a patron. The equivalent total amount of a three-fold increase consumption expenses will circulate into the local economy, perk up concomitant downstream industries, cycled itself back to the investor and more employment is continuously generated.

This “enabling environment”, however, must start with the resolution, once and for all, of the perpetual and plaguing problems of water and electricity, hounding the people of Bacolod for years. No businesses, homo sapiens, the kingdoms animalia and plantae can survive without a stable, affordable, accessible “basic of all basics” services, like water and electricity. Again, only Gamboa acted on the “Pumuluyo” miseries.

For years, Bacolod City is hounded by what the pumuluyo jokingly call “a daily dose of ice tea and native coffee” flowing out of their faucets which a privatized water district did not solve at all, not to mention the added costs to maximize private profits and a Value Added Tax (VAT) pass on cost. Then comes an electric distribution utility that engaged itself with closeted transactions its management appeared so unwilling to disclose with all honesty and transparency.

The entire Bacolod City is witness to the forthright speeches, SP Resolutions and combative actions of Gamboa, from the Halls of the Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) to the open streets bearing the scorching heat and pouring rain – together with the pumuluyo, they articulate the plaguing problems of water and electricity. He was guillotined by the carpetbaggers, of course, those ignorant of the fact that a sub-standard and inadequate delivery of services are added costs to both consumers and businesses especially the Micro-Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), the life-blood of the local economy. Added cost brought by sub-standard and inadequate delivery of basic services by a local government emaciates the local economy’s aggregate demand, thus, slowing down the employment engines of all businesses.

The Gamboa “enabling environment” reverses this situation through the proper delivery of basic services coupled with the proper implementation of sound local fiscal and monetary policies with the goal of cost reduction and demand expansion. With an increased local aggregate demand, the City is forced to establish what Gamboa also explained as the creation of the Bacolod City Technology and Livelihood Development Center (TLDC) that would develop future human resource base and offer courses congruent to the employment and skills needs of an enabled-robust business economy. Subsequently, the TLDC can offer short-term courses accredited by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) with links to the ASEAN integrated work programs, that would enable graduates to qualify for employment abroad.

Down at the barangay level, the implementation of Gamboa’s livelihood training and cooperative development ordinances that empower people to plan the “economy of their own community and barangay” would be given the greatest “push”. These Gamboa ordinances create the legal and social framework in transforming the barangays as economic centers where sustainable livelihood, income generating backyard businesses and mini home industries are to be institutionalized to serve as a major component of the City’s business supply chain, eventually increasing income and consumption capacity of these barangay stakeholders and strengthening further the aggregate demand for local businesses. Gamboa had proven time and again that it is not the primary duty of the government to provide jobs.

Instead, the duty of government is to provide a good “enabling environment” for individual entrepreneurship and private businesses to prosper. Only an enabling environment defines the economic and employment goals of Bacolod, defies the JO patronage politics and destroys the scourge of money politics.

It can be done!* (GABS)