RATHER THAN imagining and realizing the development possibilities of their localities, local government officials are caught in a Sisyphusian task. On one hand, they are hard-pressed to access resources for projects that demonstrate their capacity to deliver but do not effectively respond to the problem of poverty. On the other hand, they are politically obliged to mobilize partisan, fickle, and temporary support for higher-level officials. If they fail to deliver on either side, they lose both sides. Given the immensity of the task, who has time to govern — much less govern with dynamism and creativity?

Thus we see how much more heroic the innovative local chief executives are, and how understandable it is for local officials to stagnate or keep the status quo. The tendency of local chief executives is to focus on survival, which means to balance the expectations and demands of the constituents with those of more powerful and "resource-full" politicians. The local government official stands at the nexus between two conservative worlds that need to draw from each other. In other words, it is easier for the local chief executive to facilitate the unhealthy symbiosis between two separate worlds.

The Code, however, gives local government officials a chance to be otherwise. They have the right, duty, resources and, sometimes, the capacity to realize their potential to become the facilitators of genuine development of their communities. The main obstacles are the fact that the Internal Revenue Allocation does not fully cover their financial needs and that they often lack the capacity for fiscal management, development planning, and resource generation.

But idealistic local government leaders have allies both among national agencies, universities, local and national civil-society organizations, and donor agencies. Many organizations believe that sustainable development begins with responsive governance and that furthermore, responsive governance begins at the locality. Thus there has been much outpouring of funds for local-governance training, local civil society capability building, and best-practices recognition to support decentralization. Slowly but surely, we have been hearing more and more anecdotes that tell of men and women realizing their new powers and their full capacities to infuse new life to their languishing political worlds.

Yet this question remains: what pushes some localities to explore the new paths while others remain as they have always been? To maintain the status quo is easy because the pressures of both worlds keep you in place. To embrace the innovative possibilities of the new governance regime requires an energy that will break one out of the balance of the status quo.

Reading through the documentation of winners of the Galing Pook awards, it seems that the best local government units always have a dynamic chief executive committed to professionalism and good governance; can partner with external support groups-usually both foreign funding agencies and national and local civil society groups that can provide training or support in the realization of development plans; can easily mobilize citizenry toward change, and have broken or weakened the cultural stranglehold of traditional politics.

It has been 15 years after the passage of the Local Government Code. Time enough for small but significant victories. But not time enough to break completely with decades of centralized and stifling governance.

Both Cristina Montiel, Ph.D., and Agustin Rodriguez, Ph. D., teach at Ateneo de Manila University. Montiel is a professor of peace/political psychology and has been with Ateneo for 30 years. She currently coordinates the doctoral program in Social-Organizational Psychology. Rodriguez is an associate professor of philosophy. He has worked with various governance NGOs to lobby for the authentic implementation of the Local Government Code and its people's empowerment provisions.