Rightsizing the government

Just how big the government bureaucracy ought to be if the goal is to make the government more efficient in delivering public service at the right time and at the right fashion? Thus, rightsizing the government – not the traditional term of reorganizing – is being used to refer to renewed calls to revamp the Philippine bureaucracy.

Rightsizing the government was one of the priority bills that President Rodrigo Duterte identified during his state of the nation address (SONA) in Congress last July 24. “The people’s patience is wearing this. So is mine. I am reiterating my directive to all government agencies from frontline services to our people from womb to tomb – to further streamline their respective services to make these truly efficient and people-friendly,” President Duterte told his audience at the SONA.

As former Mayor of Davao City, President Duterte frequently expresses his desire to replicate at the national government how they at the city government satisfy the needs of the transacting public. One of the favorite examples of the President is his rule that no public transaction with Davao City Hall must exceed three days, or 72 hours of waiting time, especially in securing business permits and licenses.

As Chief Executive, the President wants all national government agencies to facilitate and make less complicated for the public in conducting their transactions. His stern warning – which he kept as a rule at Davao City Hall – is that no one should be made to come back over and over again to get things done by the government.

The red tape in the bureaucracy is the breeding ground from which the twin evils of graft and corruption proliferate in the government from the lowest ranks all the way to the top.

For the past two consecutive days of public hearings at the Senate last Monday and at the House of Representatives yesterday, such sad state of the bureaucracy was best exemplified at the Bureau of Customs. In televised public hearings one after the other, the congressional investigations brought to light how Customs Bureau conveniently glossed over a red-flagged shipment that later turned out to be P6.4-billion worth of shabu from China.

By fluke, the Philippine Drugs Enforcement Agency and the National Bureau of Investigation were able to recover the single biggest illegal shabu shipment.

As of this writing, President Duterte summoned yesterday to a meeting at Malacanang Palace while Customs chief Nicanor Faeldon was in the middle of the House hearing. At the Senate hearing, Faeldon assumed full responsibility as Customs chief for “whatever action or inaction” that failed the agency to catch the smuggled shabu shipment.

Faeldon, however, got a reprieve after meeting with President Duterte yesterday even as several Senators and House leaders call for his resignation over this shabu snafu of the Customs chief.

Faeldon recruited some of his former Oakwood mutiny rebel leaders to join him as Customs deputy commissioners. Their supposed vigilance and advocacy for good government apparently are not good enough. Being non-lawyers and perhaps lack of working knowledge of the Customs and Tariff Code became their weakness, or incompetence to say the least.

No matter how well meaning or crusading maybe those working in the government, the bureaucratic system will gobble them up whole, especially in front-line agencies involved in revenue-generation agencies such as the Customs Bureau.

The problem of corruption in the government is systemic. Thus, the solution, or solutions require radical, if not unorthodox measures to come up with more acceptable and workable system at the bureaucracy.

For now, the current buzzword is rightsizing the government as being planned by President Duterte to start at the second year of his administration. In the same SONA, the President mentioned many of his frustrations and pet peeves in the workings of the national government that he came to learn more about in the first year in office at Malacanang Palace.

“We will right size the national government. Let us trim the excess fat and add more muscle through the expeditious passage of ‘The Act Rightsizing the National Government to Improve Public Service Delivery and for Other Purposes.’ I therefore urge Congress to pass this at the soonest (time),” President Duterte exhorted the leaders and members of the 17th Congress.

“We want to make sure that our people receive the quality services that they deserve, minus the delays caused by bureaucratic red tape. I expect speedy reforms along this line,” President Duterte pointed out.

A few days later, Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Benjamin Diokno announced administration plans to abolish the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). Although a law would be required to abolish it, Diokno disclosed the Duterte administration is already drafting a bill to do away with government offices like the PCGG as part of a streamlining process.

Much earlier, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, House Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas of Ilocos Norte and House justice panel chairman Reynaldo Umali of Oriental Mindoro filed bills that seek to abolish the PCGG and transfer all its authorities and responsibilities to the Office of the Solicitor General.

Still around after 30 years after it was created by the late President Corazon Aquino after the February,1986 EDSA People Power Revolution, Diokno justified the planned abolition of the PCGG for having served already its purpose to recover suspected ill-gotten wealth.

Understandably, former President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III opposed the PCGG abolition. Incidentally, the Aquino family quietly observed yesterday the eighth death anniversary of their late matriarch at the Manila Memorial Park in Paranaque City.

In obvious exasperation over the continuing red tape in the bureaucracy, President Duterte exclaimed too loudly his wish “to destroy” literally the government if only to rid this monster out of existence. The President blurted this out before an audience of business gathering in Davao City a few days before he delivered his SONA.

Instead of destroying the bureaucracy, President Duterte apparently has found a saner way to do it by rightsizing the government. The PCGG is obviously the first to go.