Case Study: MUNICIPALITY OF KAWAYAN, BILIRAN: TRANSFORMING TRADITIONAL POLITICS

The case assigned for our analysis was about the leadership story of Mayor Rodolfo J. Espina, Mayor of the Municipality of Kawayan, a fifth-class municipality in the Province of Biliran in Region VIII.

4. Internal Factor Evaluation

In analyzing the leadership style of Mayor Rodolfo J. Espina, we come across several significant strengths and weaknesses inherent in the individual (as case-study subject).

Strengths:

Experience / Family Background
Undoubtedly, Mayor Espina’s performance as local executive of the Municipality of Kawayan was greatly affected by his family’s political background. Born into a politically-oriented clan, Espina was exposed very early to the affairs of his father; he had early exposure as well in political campaigning and visiting his father’s constituents.
This early exposure made him comfortable with people, honed his interpersonal skills, and perhaps even made him generally likable. This would eventually prove helpful in his political career.
Mayor Espina also had experience as farm manager – this developed his skills in general administrative tasks, people management, and basic human relations. His experience abroad also strengthened his personal will and character.

Personality
Mayor Espina’s orientation toward people was clearly among his major strengths. Through his personality, Espina was able to talk immediately to his constituents – knowing at once what problems they had that affected their daily affairs.

Weaknesses:

Failure to adapt to the changing needs of the times
Being bred in traditional politics, Mayor Espina was oriented on what was traditionally valued by the constituents – infrastructure and the delivery of basic services like electricity and water. But as the case showed, Mayor Espina failed to see the importance of developing human resources – making people realize that they must not be satisfied with patronage politics, but must ultimately be trained to be responsible for their own development and welfare.
Interestingly, while this may have been seen (in the case) as a development that Mayor Espina failed to notice, it appeared that the local constituents of Kawayan are more used to patronage politics – giving value to the role of the local executive as provider of their needs rather than someone who empowers them.

Alcoholism
Stress wielded its toll on Mayor Espina, whose outlet for his personal difficulties was his addiction to alcohol. Stress also led to mood swings, leading to frequent occasions of rifts with his staff, admonishing them in public for some lapses that could have been corrected in a more proactive way.

Economic Deprivation of the Municipality
One obvious difficulty on the part of the Mayor is the poor economic status of the municipality, with barely a million pesos in tax revenues, making the provision of basic services virtually impossible. This forced Espina to look for creative ways to augment the scarce resources in order to fund the needed developmental initiatives for the municipality.

5. External Factor Evaluation

A number of opportunities and threats also surfaced in the analysis of the leadership story of Mayor Espina.

Opportunities:

CDF Allotment from Congress
To augment the meager resources coming from tax revenues and the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), Mayor Espina used the Congressional Development Fund (CDF) allotted to his father’s constituents (his father was Congressman of Biliran province). Through this, he was able to put in place (during his first term as Mayor) most of the basic infrastructure – water, electricity, and roads.

Responsive electorate
Mayor Espina’s constituents from the Municipality of Kawayan were quite receptive of the development initiatives he implemented. At a time when most of them were used to the traditional patronage politics, Espina encouraged his electorate to change their perspective – to claim more responsibility for their own lives. And they responded well.

Additional experience
Aside from his political experience, Espina had a few years of valuable experience as manager of their family’s farm in Tanay, Rizal. These were very important years of learning for Espina, whose personal relations were honed through his frequent contacts with the farmworkers. Moreover, Espina’s experience in the United States taught him to be self-sufficient, developed his self-determination and courage. These are traits that would ultimately help him in his bid for public office.

Threats:

People’s preference for patriarchal government
One important threat to Espina’s leadership is his constituents’ clear preference for a leader who will provide them their needs, rather than develop them to become self-sustaining and empowered.

6. SWOT/TOWS

Strengths * Experience / Family Background * Personality | Weaknesses * Failure to adapt to the changing needs of the times * Alcoholism * Economic Deprivation of the Municipality | Opportunities * CDF Allotment from Congress * Responsive electorate * Additional experience | Threats * People’s preference for patriarchal government |

7. Alternative courses of action

After reading the leadership story of Mayor Espina, we note that many factors have affected his performance as local executive. Foremost of these is his family’s political clout, which is actually the main reason why he was urged to run for public office. In fact, his family occupied most of the key positions in the province. But as the case showed, family history is not the only determinant of success in politics. It also requires the proper people skills, work ethics, openness to change, and determination to overcome challenges. Upon analyzing the problems encountered by Mayor Espina as he went through his second term (as Mayor), alternative courses of action needed to be undertaken to ensure that he would successfully run his municipality’s affairs. For one, he needed to focus on the essentials – educate his constituents to realize the value of empowering themselves so that they learn to sustain themselves and not depend solely on dole-outs from the government. Secondly, the stresses of leadership should be met with greater focus and determination, rather than be simply worn out and swayed by vices like alcoholism, and be overcome by depression. Leaders need the biggest support from their constituents.

8. Recommendations

From the analysis of the case, the following are some recommended courses of action:

1. Local executives must undergo continuous learning, in order to perform their functions properly.
2. Leaders must explore various options and possibilities to properly educate their constituents on how to be empowered and be capable of sustaining their own needs (and not be too dependent on government).
3. Creative ways of running government must be undertaken. Creativity is also needed in sourcing funding for the different government projects.

9. Conclusions The case about Mayor Espina’s leadership story as chief executive was filled with a lot of learnings. From the reading, the following conclusions are drawn:
1. While political clans may eye one of their scions to run for public office, it is necessary for these individuals to be properly trained for the position eyed. Knowing the influence that these families have, it is almost sure that they will win the elections. But winning does not guarantee good performance. They must be equipped to handle the job.
2. The electorate needs to be re-educated when it comes to what they must expect from government. The government is not there to give them everything they need. They should also take it upon themselves to elevate their status to become productive citizens.