Abdul-Azim D.

Ontok
Nominee, 13th and 14th CIPYML
Journal
June 6, 2012

Now that I am managing to adjust to the ways of life here in MSU Marawi, I and
my roommates arrived early at the venue of our very first class at the university. Before
the class started, Dr. Ati informed us of the major activities that will be undertaken at the
university. He said that our performance will be rated accordingly through daily quizzes
and a comprehensive final examination. He further added that we will be attending 2 or
3 workshops during our 2-weeks stay at the MSU Marawi.
The class formally started when Dr. Ati introduced the resource person for the
entire day. He was Dr. Nasroden Guro, a former Vice Chancellor of the Academic Affairs
of MSU Maguindanao and a current professor at the College of Public Affairs of MSU
Marawi. Since 2004, he was a resource person during the training of CIPYML nominees
at the university due to his high competence and effectiveness on delivering the subject
matter assigned to him.
Dr. Guros lecture was divided into two major topicsThe Philippine
Administrative and Civil Service System during the morning session and Philippine
Governance: Issues and Challenges during the afternoon session. He strongly
emphasized that the three branches of the Philippine government are equally powerful
and dependent to each other even though they have separate powers. He further
described these three branches of government and clearly defined their functions.
Moreover, Dr. Guro stressed that the countrys administrative system is greatly

influenced by our cultural values which contradicts the Weberian Bureaucracy from
which the system was derived.
The highlight of the afternoons lecture was the good governance and the issues
and challenges that aggravate its implementation. He said that corruption, which is now
becoming a more serious problem of our country, directly rooted from the practice of
non-good governance. Eventually, he presented a list of ways and means to combat the
corruption in our country. In some ways, Dr. Guro assured that if our government shall
practice good governance, poverty will be reduced and national development will be
achieved. Even though a power outage took place during his lecture, he still managed
to draw attention from us.
From the way that he presented his lecture, Dr. Guro has shown great
competence of the topic and a good sense of humor. I enjoyed the entire lecture and I
have learned much from him. I gained a better knowledge of the administrative system
of our country and the problems surrounding it. But the drawback was that he has told
some stories which are somehow irrelevant of the topic. Dr. Guro sometimes loses his
focus and unfortunately, this resulted to losing some precious time.