“Poor countries are poor not because they lack resources, but because they lack effective political institutions." -Francis Fukuyama
In a recent
survey, The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), a survey of
expatriate businessmen, rated the Philippines an 7.57 out of a worst possible
score of 10 as among the worst and most frustrating bureaucracies in Asia;
coming only fourth to Indonesia (8.37), Vietnam (8.54) and India (9.11) (PERC,
2012). Public administration in the Philippines have always been focused on
three concerns—reorganisation, decentralisation and corruption.
Reorganisation
of the bureaucracy has always been an initiative of any Philippine president throughout
the years. Reorganisation programs have been mainly concerned with ensuring the
effectiveness, efficiency, affordability and accountability of government; that
is, government effort must be focused on its core functions, rationalisation of
service delivery support systems and right staffing, rationalise government
funds and ensuring transparency, respectively.
To achieve a government
that works better but costs less, the government must streamline and reengineer
the redundant and bloated Philippine bureaucracy. As per the latest 2008
Inventory of Government Personnel Data, the Philippine bureaucracy has a total
of 1,313,538 government personnel. National Government Agencies (NGA) staff the
most number with 832,676 (63.39%) while Local Government Units (LGU) have
381,502 (29.04%) and Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCC) have
99,360 (7.56%). Compared to the last inventory conducted by the Civil Service
in 2004, the number of government personnel decreased by 11%, from 1,475,699 in
2004 to 1,313,538 in 2008.
The decrease in
government personnel prove to be a step forward in reducing the bloated size of
the Philippine bureaucracy. However, the regional distribution of government
personnel continues to be misplaced. Staff in the National Capital Region (NCR)
increased from 437, 243 (29.63%) in 2004 to 506,103 (38.53%) in 2008, a
percentage increase of 8.9%. Comparatively, the Autonomous Region of Muslim
Mindanao (ARMM), which is perennially among the poorest regions in the
Philippines, only has 50, 676 (3.86%) of the total number of government
personnel. As it was in 2004, the Philippine bureaucracy continues to be maldistributed,
“areas which need the services more have only a few number of public servants”
(Brillantes, 2008).
Brillantes
adequately pointed out the numbers and statistics of the sizes which continue
to plague Philippine public administration. However, what numbers cannot
explain is the aspect of professionalization and degree of autonomy of the
bureaucracy. One of the core functions of public administration is regulation. “To
ensure their regulatory independence, agencies are typically staffed by experts,
lawyers, and accountants who have neither run for political office nor
previously worked for any player in the industry they are regulating” (David,
2013). The degree of professionalization and autonomy of the Philippine state
apparatus can be examined in the recent issue of the Manila Electric Company
(MERALCO) increase rate in electricity. In his Philippine Daily Inquirer
article, Randy David (2013) examines the case of the current chair of the
Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), Zenaida Cruz-Ducut. She is ill-suited for
the position, as her background suggests. Ducut was a member of Congress for
nine years where she was a loyalist of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Upon the end of GMA’s presidency, she started giving out positions to her loyalists.
Ducut was a political appointee of GMA to the ERC. She was a lawyer; she had no
idea about the functions and how to run the ERC. Recently, whistle blower
Benhur Luy said that Ducut was involved in the pork barrel scam where she acted
as an intermediary between lawmakers and Janet-Lim Napoles. The inability of
the Philippine public administration to be insulated from the collusion between
state actors and rent-seeking oligarchs is what hinders development in the
Philippines, contributing to the overall cycle of booty capitalism (Hutchcroft,
1998).
Aside
from reorganisation, decentralisation has been a mechanism adopted by
governments all over the world to design a public administration that is not
only more efficient but also more responsive (Brillantes, 2008). To further
understand the concept, decentralisation could be operationalised in three
ways: deconcentration, devolution and debureucratisation.
Deconcentration
is a form of decentralisation that limits lower levels of government to mere
transmitting of orders and implementing decisions that are decided centrally.
Devolution, on the other hand, is the most extensive form of decentralisation
where powers and responsibilities are transferred from national government to
local governments. These responsibilities and powers include the delivery of
basic services and fiscal powers, respectively. Finally, debureaucratisation
involves moving beyond government into co-opting the private sector and
non-governmental organisations in the delivery of services.
In the
Philippines, decentralisation culminated with the Local Government Code (LGC)
of 1991, which provided for the most sweeping devolution of powers and
responsibilities in the entire Philippine history. Devolution is based upon the
principle of proximity; the local government unit (LGU) is the nearest to the
people, therefore it is in the best position to serve them. One of the major
features of the LGC is the increase responsibility for the delivery of various
aspects of basic services such as in health, public works and education.
Another is the responsibility of enforcement of certain regulatory powers such
as the enforcement of environmental law. Financial resources and powers are
also decentralised by broadening their taxing powers and an increased share
from the national taxes through the institutionalisation of the Internal
Revenue Allotment (IRA). Finally, the LGC of 1991 “increased the democratic
space of civil society and embraced them in participating in local governance”
(Brillantes, 2008), as evident in the increase in the number and participation
of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) over the years.
However, despite
the promises of decentralisation, a recent World Bank Public Expenditure Review
(WB-PER) argues that “decentralization in the Philippines has not played an
important role in reducing geographic disparities and instead may be
exacerbating them” (World Bank, 2011). This is largely due to a number of
problems the last 20 years of decentralisation have experienced—lack of fiscal
capacity and autonomy of LGUs and misplaced and unaccountable spending
“If you ask any
LGU in the Philippines if their funding is enough for their constituency, they
would always say it is not enough—parating
kulang. We need more money; we need more funds to serve our constituency
much better,” Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian said in a 2012 forum on fiscal
decentralisation. The weak fiscal capacity of LGUs has restricted them from
performing the devolved responsibilities. This is largely due to an increased
dependence on an IRA that is not, in the first place, equalising. Eighty nine
percent of LGU financial resources come from the IRA whereas only 11% come from
Non-IRA resources (Llanto, 2012). Although they are given extensive taxation
powers to generate their own revenue, the poorest provinces simply do not have
a large enough of a tax base. To further exacerbate the geographical
inequality, on a per capita basis, more allotments go to LGUS with higher per
capita local revenues (Guevera et al, 1994). Also, LGUs receive mandates from
national government without a clear source for funding. For example, the Magna Carta for Public
Health Workers mandates LGUs to pay for subsistence allowance, laundry
allowance, hazard pay, etc. without a legislated source of funding. IRA
dependence and its non-equalising formulation have not only incapacitated the
LGU, it has also compromised the LGU’s genuine autonomy.
An examination
of the expenditure pattern of LGUs suggests misplaced priorities. From 2001 to
2008, expenditure on social services was on a steady incremental decrease from
26.1% to 20.3%; this is despite the general rise in population (Diokno, 2012).
While expenditure on social services continued to fall, budget shares of
general public services and other purposes, which can be considered as
administrative overhead, rose from 40.5% to 44.1% and 12.4% to 17.2%. Further,
local governments commonly charge payment of contractual workers to maintenance
and other operating expenditure or against development projects, which are
supposed to be charged as overhead (Llanto, 2012). Also, LGUs commonly
supplement costs that are supposed to be funded by national government. In
effect, spending for social services and capital goods are drowned out. The
absence of a performance monitoring system of local service delivery makes it
difficult to examine and oversee local service delivery (Diokno, 2012).
Finally, public
administration in the Philippines is plagued by the perennial, pervasive and
pathological issue of corruption. The misuse of public power for private profit
hinders growth and development by deterring trade and investment and
inefficient spending (Brillantes, 2008). National government agencies have
always been at the centre of corruption scandals. Just recently, corruption in
the Bureau of Customs even pushed Commissioner Rodolfo Biazon to call for its
dissolution and eventually, his resignation. Anecdotal evidences point out to
corruption in the Bureau of Internal Revenue and constant harassment of businessmen.
Aside from national state actors, operating under the radar of accountability
and commonly viewed through rose-coloured lenses are local politicians who
often escape with corruption.
Consider the
IRA, at one level, it is an inter-governmental transfer to further capacitate
LGUs in local service delivery; at another level, chunks of the IRA are
controlled with personal discretion by local politicians like governors,
mayors, municipal mayors and barangay captains. Further, development decision
making is not based on technical assessment but rather in constantly shifting
power relations and electoral considerations (Hutchcroft, 2012). The IRA, being
a source of patronage, places “money politics” above policies and programs.
This effectively builds authoritarian-like structures in the locale and
encourages warlord-like behaviour of local politicians. At
the national level, this further de-incentivises the formation of
ideology-based and programmatic political parties. To exacerbate the
problem, the only institutional check on local politicians is mid-term
elections. The lack of accountability mechanisms in both behaviour and
expenditure has bred difficult problems in governance.
After discussing these issues and problems, it is
imperative that the question posed by Brillantes at the beginning of his
article be answered—is there a Philippine public administration? Or better
still, for whom is Philippine public administration?
Resonating his
initial answer, indeed, there is a Philippine public administration in terms of
administrative structures and processes. National bureaucratic agencies like
the aforementioned Bureau of Customs and Bureau of Internal Revenue have
respective organisational features, functions and procedures as much as
sub-national administrative arms like local government units possess their own.
However, its mere existence matters less than for whom it actually exists—does Philippine
public administration exist for the general public?
The situational
examples that were previously given in this review provide empirical evidence
to how many scholars brand the Philippine state as patrimonial (Hutchroft,
1998; McCoy, 1993). According to Paul Hurtchroft (1991), “the state apparatus
is chocked continually by an anarchy of particularistic demands from, and
particularistic actions on behalf of, those oligarchs and cronies who are
currently most favoured by its top officials.” For modern capitalism to work
and fulfil its promises of general prosperity, the bureaucracy must function
along impersonal and rational lines of service and regulation. However, in the
Philippines, oligarchic interests and rent-seeking behaviour totally captures
the bureaucracy and manipulates it according to their purposes. Not only that,
state actors, who commonly come from oligarchic families, also use the state
apparatus to accumulate personal wealth at the expense of the general public. The
most recent issue of alleged collusion between a local politician and contractors,
who will receive 30% to 35% kickback, in the sub-par bunkhouses built for
Yolanda victims can attest to such claims. This co-optation between the social oligarchic
elites and political state actors in capturing a highly weak and incoherent
bureaucracy has created patterns of political continuity in what can be
classified as a patrimonial, anti-development and predatory Philippine state.
Is there a
Philippine public administration? Of course, there is. Better still, for whom is
Philippine public administration? Unfortunately, it has and continues to exist
for the powers that be.
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