Revival of career bureaucracy

NO HOLDS BARRED
Ike Señeres

Word has it that the new government is having a hard time filling up the vacant positions in the bureaucracy, because of a shortage of qualified candidates. Have they ever stopped to think that there is an existing pool of career professionals that they could immediately tap?

Perhaps in the rush to change the “old” appointees with “new” faces, the new government has forgotten that there is a deep bench of deserving potential appointees who are not simply qualified, they have been officially certified to take senior positions after passing rigorous tests and difficult requirements.

I am referring to the pool of professionals who have passed either the Career Service Executive Examination (CSEE) or the Career Executive Service Officer (CESO) examination, or both. The CSEE is a qualification granted by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.

The CESO on the other hand is granted by the Career Executive Service Board (CESB) in accordance with the provisions of a Presidential Decree. By comparison, the CSEE is a higher qualification compared to the CESO, but the government seems to have forgotten the difference between the two. A Presidential Decree is practically similar to an Executive Order, but it has the force and effect of a law since it was issued duringMartial Law, nevertheless, a qualification created by the law could not be higher than one that is created by the Constitution.

The new government might have won on a platform of change, but that does not mean that it should change what is already provided for in the Constitution. To do that, it would have to go through a constitutional change, but that is apparently not in their agenda now. The platform of change implied that it should go for what is right, but that does not mean that it should ignore what is already right, even if it is already old.

The direction that the new government should be towards what is right, coming from what is wrong, and not towards what is new, coming from what is old. In this context therefore, the goal of the government should be to put up or to bring back what is right, regardless of whether the right thing to do is old or is new.

It is implied in the platform of change that the institutions that were ignored or destroyed by the previous administrations should now be noticed to say the least, or restored, to say the best.

To take an inventory, it could be said that many institutions, in fact too many were ignored or destroyed by the previous administrations, but for purposes of this discussion, let us just say that the institution of the career bureaucracy should be given the topmost attention, because the career people in the bureaucracy are supposed to be the lifeblood of the institutions that they are sworn to serve and preserve, at least that is how it is supposed to be.

As it is supposed to be, based on the Constitution and our system of governance, all government officials starting from the level of the Undersecretaries all the way down to the level of the section chiefs are all supposed to be career officers. Only the Secretary is supposed to be the political appointee, and no one else.

In many parliamentary systems, the most senior Undersecretary is appointed as the Permanent Secretary, and the Minister, as the name actually implies, performs only the “ministerial” functions.

Over the years, encompassing many past administrations, it has become the practice to assign political appointees in career positions, from top to bottom, practically “freezing” the career officers in the bureaucracy, bypassing them in fact to a point that they are completely ignored. As a result, we have ended up with officials who have no sense of corporate history on one hand, and have no institutional memory, on the other hand.

As it is supposed to be, Cabinet nominees are not supposed to assume their posts to perform their functions not until they are confirmed by the Commission on Appointments (CA), not even in an “acting” capacity. By allowing this wrong practice to prosper, the Executive Branch is not only ignoring the independent power of the Legislative Branch as an institution, it is also insulting a co-equal counterpart.

As an unsolicited advice to the new government, they should make it their profound objective to restore the institution of the career bureaucracy, and not just simply pursue the shallow purpose of filling up vacant positions. A good personnel officercan fill up empty jobs, but it takes a good leader to restore damaged institutions.

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