10 Best Practices of MNJQ Administration
1. Fame for Public
Service
Mayor Mary Clare Judith Phyllis Niña Jose-Quiambao realized
early on that the name recall she has gained from TV exposure and in her
succeeding work in local show business can be taken advantage of, not for the
sake of mere personal achievement or vanity, but for something of higher value:
an opportunity to serve and help more people. She parlayed worldly fame into,
not a politician’s career, but that of a public servant. She could have
remained just a private citizen who happened to be a household name and enjoyed
her life away from the limelight, but she chose to use such a rare opportunity
into a greater good, believing that this chance was a calling from God, which
she heeded with courage and daring.
As a result, visitors from all over regularly come at her
doorstep for various purposes, and she loses no time to taking all this
exposure not for her own selfish gain but for Bayambang to be known and for her
people to have opportunities in all aspects of life.
2. Beauty for Love and
Service
It is for the same reason that she takes advantage of
physical endowment – not to revel in it per se but to attract attention to her
own sociocultural and economic development projects. At every opportunity,
instead of shrinking and downplaying physical attraction, she instead plays it
up to the hilt, capitalizing on innate beauty at every turn to develop and make
known young local talents, to give deserving local fashion designers an
exposure, to capture media attention and gain mileage for events and projects
that have to do with uplifting Bayambangueños from poverty. She also uses the
feminine mystique in drawing attention to disadvantaged sectors that need
urgent help as well as unknown talents and workers deserving of recognition or
even honor. Beauty pageants, for example, like the annual Binibining Bayambang,
serve as vehicles for charity projects and the realization of goals toward
development and progress.
3. Motherly Approach to
Governance
Being a woman is often derided in the world of politics and
local governance, as it is presumed to be incapable, limited, weak, and all
other sorts of negative generalities. Mayor Niña Jose-Quiambao turns the tables
and uses her womanly character to become a strength instead of a presumed
liability. With her vision of governance, she has a keen, natural sense of
which concerns to prioritize or given attention on top of a multitude of
priorities. In her eyes, the most downtrodden, or individuals deemed as the
least in the eyes of the world, should be taken care of, made to feel they
matter, that they are equal and important, that they are fellow children of
God. No minor comment or feedback escapes her maternal attention for as long as
proper help is extended to the neediest sectors, be they lost psychotic
vagrants, or extremely sick patients pitifully enduring physical suffering, or
just about any soul in dire straits among her constituency. This vision of
leadership has produced projects such as Abong na Aro, fast-track provision and
erection of decent dwelling, and donations of every conceivable kind.
4. Transparency and
Accountability
Inured to the contradictions in the make-believe world of
showbiz, where looks can be deceiving and privacy is all but nonexistent,
public exposure is but natural for Mayor Niña Jose-Quiambao, and as is her
wont, she exploits this facet of her life to the hilt, to make the most number
of people aware of her plans, projects, and activities. But running true to
form as not only a kind-hearted individual, but also a ruthlessly frank one
(even to herself), she is fierce in protecting and upholding only what is true,
never succumbing to the deceptive strategies of traditional politics. All forms
are media are utilized at her disposal for the purpose of making the public
feel what transparency and accountability in public service means, whether it
be Facebook, newsletter, website, radio station, etc. Her internal media arm
doesn’t shy away from every opportunity to connect with the public to let them
know where each peso they contribute through their taxes ends up and how
everything redounds to them, for their own good. No one, no matter how lowly
stationed in life, is so low that she does not deserve a kind reply and, more
important, a proper response.
5. Establishing a “Smart
Town”
The use of IT is especially given due emphasis, for various
purposes: to make the work efficient, to get rid of opportunities of graft and
corruption and foster honesty and passion in public service.
With Bayambang’s dream of becoming a city, the use of
information technology is deemed essential.
To her mind, embracing modernity and modern technology is a
must as long as one does not sacrifice one’s morals and principles.
6. Clean and Green Spaces
When talking about beauty, Mayor Niña also refers to making
Bayambang a clean and green town in its march toward material progress. This is
to ensure that the town won’t end up as another ghost town that may be
economically viable but soul-crushing with its concrete jungle look and barely
livable spaces. For this, she has launched the Bali-Balin Bayambang project to
encourage all barangays to outdo one another in making their place a joy to
behold and a blessing to live in.
For this purpose, she also ensures that the Ecological Solid
Waste Management Office is given all the equipment, vehicles, and personnel it
needs to maintain order in garbage collection and disposal.
7. Passion for Innovation
Using common sense and natural intellect, the Jose-Quiambao
administration is equally keen on using innovative approaches to solving any
problem at all. If something does not work, the leadership is sure to come to
the rescue finding immediate and long-term solutions, even if it means
unorthodox solutions. Armed with such boldness of spirit inherent in the young,
she is impatient for complacency, dishonesty, disservice, stasis or inertia,
lack of motivation and imagination, and the like, thereby overthrowing a status
quo that keeps old barriers to entry intact, opportunities unequal, and things
generally imbalanced and uninspired. She rewards innovation in various ways,
whether through public recognition, promotion, and the like, with the welfare
of the public first in her agenda. A long-suffering clientele, she believes,
deserve only what’s best for the longest time.
8. Service with a Smile
Acknowledging that every LGU employee carries with him or
her the leadership’s ‘face’ wherever they are, she makes it a point to let
everyone know how important it is to have a cheerful disposition while serving
the public. With taxpayer money being the lifeblood of the LGU, it is only but
proper to her to give back what they deserve: quality service – one served up
with a smile.
She instructs everyone in the LGU to “always be kind” no
matter the clientele’s behavior, as kindness is contagious and a big plus in
settling misunderstandings and pacifying high emotions. She believes in the
power of a simple smile, one that’s coming from deep within the heart, or the
power of a kind reply born of natural goodwill and compassion, for both go a
long way in making her constituency feel served with the genuine love and
affection they deserve.
9. Inclusive Development
Her articulation of her administration’s major thrusts in
her First 100 Days Report speaks for itself. The Jose-Quiambao administration
will be no different from the previous dispensation in combatting poverty: it
will have the widest possible scope, but with emphasis on gut-level matters.
Thus the major thrusts of “Education for All, “Health for All,” “Protection of
Women and Children,” “Food for All through Agricultural Modernization,” “Jobs
and Livelihood for All,” “Honest and Efficient Public Servants,” and “Clean and
Green Spaces for All.” With unrelenting inclusivity and belief in affirmative
action (or preferential treatment for the poor and other marginalized sectors),
her marching order is that no one is ever left behind in taking the leap
towards progress and development.
10. Patronage of History, Culture, and Arts
Mayor Niña’s womanly instinct for the good, the true, and
the beautiful naturally gravitates toward enriching the town’s tourism,
history, culture, and arts and crafts scene through various means possible.
Convinced that these under-appreciated aspects of a town’s life are in fact its
‘hardware,’ she upholds its core wealth as an indelible part of the town’s
identity that animates the residents’ sense of heathy ethnic pride and desire
for the town’s uplift in all aspects. Mayor Niña is certainly no slouch in her
duties as First Lady responsible for protecting and advocating its
sociocultural resources, first and foremost by being its, without a doubt, the
town’s chief art patron/patroness of the arts together with husband, Dr. Cezar
T. Quiambao. It is under her watch that a very important project, the Bayambang
Museum: Home of Innovation, came to fruition, among other notable achievements.
