COTABATO CITY—Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman on Wednesday launched here the OGPinas national campaign during a forum in the highlights of the region’s fifth founding anniversary, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) officials in attendance.
Addressing the event, Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim said the BARMM has put in place measures to ensure transparency in the administration and operations of public office, as well as for truly consultative and inclusive governance.
Cotabato City Mayor Bruce Matabalao, in his welcome address, said he would have pushed for membership with the OGPinas on an observer status “to champion Open Government Partnership in BARMM, but unfortunately the membership had already been closed for entry of new members.”
Mayor Matabalao noted that the city has achieved significant milestones that “make local governance not only the government of the people and by the people, but a government that is truly for the people”—and that, “none should be left behind.”
Pangandaman noted that the OGP also finds basis in the BARMM Administrative Code which prescribes “honesty and integrity in the delivery of public service” and in its evolution of open transactions in governance.
BARMM Finance and Budget Minister, CPA-lawyer Obaida Pacasem recalled he did not hesitate a moment when Secretary Pangdaman talked to him about having to launch the OGPinas Campaign as a matter of national advocacy in the region. Secretary Pangandaman acknowledged Minister Pacasem as her counterpart in the BARMM.
Pangandaman said the Philippines is a founding member of the OGP, but it is only during the administration of President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos that OGP has been institutionalized Executive Order No. 31: Institutionalizing the Philippine Open Government Partnership and for other purposes.
Hadji Zalave Dinas of the MOSEP, the keynote speaker for the non-government organizations (NGOs) credited a Magindanao leader, now deceased, as the signatory for the Philippine government of the OGP as an instrument of anti-corruption, twice over in the UN Covenant of the OGP Founding Member-Countries in Austria and in Mexico.
The late Simeon A. Datumanong, then Secretary of Justice, headed the OGP Philippine Delegation to the UN in Vienna, Austria in 2003, and in Merida, Mexico in 2004. With Datumanong was then Senator Edgardo Angara as Vice-chairman of the Philippine Delegation along with a member of the House of Representatives, who at that time was the chairperson of the House Committee on Finance and Public Accountability, Dinas recalled.
Pangandaman cited South Cotabato for its OPG practices which, she said, have been in place since 2018, principally, through public involvement in the formulation of key policies in local governance, including local budgeting.