“Naniniwala ako sa serbisyong mabilis at diretso sa tao.”

Ramon Naval Guico is the President of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines and the Mayor of the town of Binalonan in Pangasinan. He recently launched the Ginhawa Mo, Gets (Gamot, Edukasyon, Trabaho, Serbisyo) Ko Agad Campaign, which aims to strengthen the local government, and provide faster and improved services to the people. He is running for Senator in the 2010 elections.
He is the 3rd child of Ramon and Vicenta of Pangasinan and Isabela. A born entrepreneur, Ramon, at age 5 and all throughout his elementary and high school years, was already helping her mother, “Aling Quita”, in their store. Notwithstanding this, he was a known student leader and was the President of his high school student council.
Ramon went to Baguio City for college and took up engineering at the University of Baguio. One time, his father asked him to accompany him to the town of Sto. Tomas in Pangasianan to become a judge at a beauty contest. There, he met his future wife, Arlyn, a pharmacist.

Career

During his early years as a married man in the 1970’s, Ramon started a poultry and hog-raising business. During those days, Ramon would wake up in the middle of the night to tend to his business. He then diversified his business into gravel and sand by buying junk Pantranco buses to be used for transport of his products. This earned him the moniker, “Magbubulok” or Junk Man by his relatives and friends. After some time, Ramon then ventured into the construction business where he built dams and farm-to-market roads. In 1985, Ramon veered towards healthcare and education, which by then was the largest business venture he undertook. During those times, Ramon and his wife could not have a good night’s sleep thinking about how they are going to pay off their debts, but due to their constant hard work and faith, their hospital and education business flourished.

Politics

In 1987, Ramon Guico was appointed by the late Former President Aquino as mayor of Binalonan, Pangasinan. Binalonan was a 5th class municipality when Ramon started office. While at office, Mayor Guico worked hand in hand with the local community, bringing the Binalonan municipality to a 1st class municipality, with its own university contributing to affordable college education not only within the city, but also to surrounding cities.

League of Municipalities of the Philippines

Ramon Guico also had the privilege to serve not only Binalonan, but also the whole country as the President of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines. Early on, Ramon worked to change the image of the LMP long marred by wrong impression that it was nothing but a bastion of traditional local politicians to become a research-based, result-oriented and primary champions to the interests and development agenda of its member-municipalities and their constituencies.

To correct the image of LMP as nothing but a forum for mayors to socialize, Ramon used the LMP as an effective platform for innovative mayors to share their exemplary practices. During his first term as LMP National President, he launched the Ang Galing Mo Mayor (You are the Best Mayor) Project as LMP’s serious efforts to promote innovation and excellence in local governance. This project aimed to bring out the best in Philippine municipalities in order to reengineer and raise the quality of local governance in the country. The LMP made history in urging performing mayors to mentor their fellow mayors how to better perform through peer-to-peer method. Through the LMP, mayors took the lead in disseminating the various exemplary practices in municipal governance for widest replication.

The Ang Galing Mo Mayor Project made the LMP visible, not only to its members, but also to national government agencies, non-government organizations, the private sectors and international donor agencies. So successful has this project been that other Leagues also adopted the peer-to-peer method.

During Ramon’s second term, the LMP founded the Mayor’s Development Center (MDC), a first in Philippine local government organization, and even the first in Asia. The MDC now serves as the development and training arm of the LMP for improving municipal governance and leadership with the vision of establishing a community of municipal innovators and educators in the Philippines from among the most outstanding and exemplary municipal mayors. In fact, the United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), the successor of the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) has recognized MDC as an exemplary project of the LMP. The MDC offered learning events and capability building for local government officials and employees on strategic planning and management, coastal resource management, solid waste management, orientation for the newly elected Mayors (ONE-M), sustainable upland development and local economic development.

The LMP also implemented the Lakbayin ang Magandang Pilipinas Project, a weekly TV show that proudly showcases LMP’s advocacies, and innovative and effective good practices of our member municipalities in promoting good local governance for replication.

The Ang Galing Mo Mayor, the MDC and the Lakbayin ang Magandang Pilipinas were initiatives to highlight and celebrate municipalities’ innovations and excellence that are oftentimes not captured or noticed by our national decision and policy makers and even the national media.

The LMP was recognized as an active member of the UCLG and as reliable partners of international development institutions like the United Nations Family, US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Asia Foundation, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), Hans Seidel Foundation. Canadian Executive Service Organization, Australian Agency for International Development (AUSAID), and established strong partnership with its international LGU Leagues counterparts like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, China Association of Mayors, APEKSI and ADEKSI of Indonesia, Union of British Columbia VNG of the Netherlands and SALAR of Sweden. The LMP was also chosen as the regional coordinator of Southeast Asian’s women in local decision-making project of the UCLG-Asia Pacific. Because of LMP’s active international engagements, the South Asian Association of Local Authorities composed of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh solicited our advise on how to strengthen and transform a local government association.