The former president's yearning

Inefficiency and corruption have long plagued the Philippine civil service, but they might soon be overshadowed by a recent and rapidly

growing problem: call it “the president's desire”.

According to former Civil Service Commission (CSC) chief Karina Constantino-David, fromer President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has appointed an unprecedented number of ineligible people to the bureaucracy. The instrument Arroyo has used is something David calls the “desire letter” a document of endorsement signed by the former president, stating that “it is my desire” that a named person be given a particular job.

Under the constitution, the former president has unstated but implied “residual powers”. One of them allows her to directly place her choices in certain government positions where the appointing authority isn't stipulated by the law. Whereas previous chief executives were circumspect about exercising this power, former President Arroyo has apparently thrown prudence to the wind, giving government jobs to thousands of people from outside the bureaucracy. David says that while past administrations appointed favorites through “whispers” or “marginal notes”, under the Arroyo government desire letters are openly “waved around”. Sometimes they are apparently even signed by someone else on behalf of the former president.

In a scathing speech she gave before retiring from the CSC early this year, David said that more than half of the 3,000 career managers appointed by the former President are unqualified and lack the educational skills, training, background, civil-service eligibility and professional experience for their positions. She also pointed out that at least 90 of the presidential appointees were retired military or police officials; and they were given positions that had little to do with their previous jobs, in bodies like the Department of Transportation and Communications, the Bureau of Immigration, and even the Mindanao State University. According to David, desire-letter appointments not only demoralise and politicise the bureaucracy, they also lead to deprofessionalisation: “When the career bureaucracy no longer has merit and fitness as its basis because it is politics in command, you will never have a professional bureaucracy.”

Her speech provoked a vigorous reaction from the former President's Office. One spokesman said: “Her generalisations do a disservice to the over one million civil servants, both career and appointed.” He went on to assert that “all presidential appointees must perform, if they don’t they have to go, whatever their credentials may be.” And Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo said that “questions about legal qualifications are best addressed through due process, not through sweeping generalisations in luncheon speeches”.
But David is far from backing down. In an interview she said that “patronage is happening to an increasing degree.” She notes that because of desire-letter appointments, the bureaucracy already has 60 undersecretaries and assistant secretaries more than it needs. “Each one has a staff and an office, which has electrical costs. And more than half of them are not eligible.”

Perhaps the administration’s most telling response to David’s criticism was yet another political appointment. When David stepped down from the CSC, which as a constitutional body is supposed to be independent of the executive branch, former President Arroyo appointed as her successor Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo, the very Saludo who likes to insist on due process. He is known to be a loyal and close supporter of the former president.
Saludo says he got the job because, as cabinet secretary, he was already dealing with governance matters. He pledges to continue David’s priority initiatives, which included efficient and effective administrative justice, professionalising the civil service and improving public service delivery among others.

He has even devised a new acronym for his agenda: MERCI. It stands for “Morale, Efficiency, Responsiveness, Courtesy and Integrity”. For her part, David has twofold advice for her successor: “One, uphold the independence of the constitutional body; two, recognise that the bureaucracy is not just a machine it's an important component of the entire system of governance.”

The true test for Saludo will be whether he'll stand up for the civil service and oppose the former president’s proclivity for political appointments. As a constitutional body, the CSC is supposed to be independent of the executive, and as its head Saludo has a fixed term of seven years, during which he can’t be dismissed by the former president.

David isn’t too optimistic, however. She says the key to reforming the bureaucracy is a strong CSC, and the prospects of that, “with this former president, are zero”.

In the long term, however, what is most worrying about the desire letters is that former President Arroyo may have set a precedent with lasting impact: Will succeeding former presidents resist the temptation to print out their own desire letters?