Bringing back career government officials

BANTAY GOBYERNO

Ike Señeres

As it is supposed to be, all positions in the Executive Branch starting from the position of Undersecretary all the way down to the Division Chiefs are supposed to be occupied by career officials who are supposed to be protected by tenure.

That is how it is supposed to be, but that is not what is happening now. As it is supposed to be, only the Secretaries are considered as political appointees, meaning to say that they do not have tenure, and their term is co-terminus with the term of the President.

            In theory, the tenure given to career executives in the government is meant to ensure continuity of governance, as well as to ensure the strengthening of public institutions. These two are actually support each other, because only tenured officials could ensure a stable bureaucracy, and only the strong institutions could ensure a stable state. Pardon the redundancy, but these are ordinary and obvious tenets that have been ignored by previous Presidents, perhaps starting from the time of President Ferdinand Marcos.

            There are many causes of graft and corruption in the bureaucracy, but perhaps it could be said that the dominant numbers of political appointees in the supposed to be career positions would tend to contribute to this problem.

I am not saying that all political appointees are grafters, but as a matter of fact, many of them have been accused of being so. Before moving on with this discussion, I would like to put this problem in the right perspective. As it is supposed to be, there are two sides to graft and corruption, and these two sides could best be understood in the context of extortion and bribery. In this context, it is the government official who extorts if and when he unilaterally asks for a bribe, on the presumption that the private party does not offer a bribe first, also unilaterally. Conversely, it is the private party who corrupts the government official if and when he offers the bribe first. Graft is committed either way, if the government official accepts a bribe, regardless of whether he extorts for it, or if it is voluntarily offered to him as a bribe.

            Over the years however, these two terms have practically become synonymous to each other, such that a graft ridden agency is now also regarded as a corrupt agency. Even if the difference between the two has become moot and academic, we still have to know which is which, so that we would really know the enemy and in the process, be able to defeat it.

As I know it, grafters could easily be prosecuted under existing laws, but it is more difficult to charge those who corrupt the decisions of government employees by offering the bribes. In recent cases however, we have seen it happen that private parties are now also charged with plunder, along with their accomplices in the government who are also charged with the same offense. In relation to this, perhaps new laws would need to be passed so that we could charge private parties who would cause the government to be deprived of amounts below 50 million.

            Except the Philippines, all the other countries in the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) have parliamentary forms of government, wherein only the Ministers are political appointees, and everyone else below them are career officials, starting with the Permanent Secretaries all the way down to the Deputy Ministers and further down below. Yes they do have Permanent Secretaries who are really permanent and they stay in office no matter who comes in and out as the Ministers.

And yes, their Ministers almost always have ministerial duties only, because the career officials could actually run their Ministries even if the Ministries would not do anything. In terms of rank, the Deputy Ministers are equal to our Undersecretaries.

            In theory, career officials in the civil service could be expected to be loyal to their jobs because they have made it their lifetime commitment, from the time they enter the service up to the time that they retire. That much could not be said however about the political appointees, because they would only stay in office for six years each term, being co-terminus with however has appointed them.

Again I do not say that all political appointees are grafters, but without a lifetime commitment to the agencies that employ them, the temptations to make money within the short term could be too much to resist, especially so that they are usually facing the uncertainties of income generation after they leave the government service.

            I do not mean to marginalize the rest of the bureaucracy, but it could certainly be said that the institutions of the Foreign Service and the military service are more stable, precisely because their top positions are exclusively occupied by career officials. The same thing could be said of the Philippine National Police (PNP), because the career officials there are well protected by civil service laws. Just imagine what good it would do to the rest of the civil service if only its career officials are similarly protected by these laws.

As it is supposed to be, vacancies in the third level civil service positions are supposed to be filled up first by Career Executive Service (CES) eligible officials, before those who are not eligible could be considered. Email bantaygobyerno-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or text +639956441780