Governance: Rule of law is PNoy’s big challenge

Last of two parts

The law applies to all — or none at all. — Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim

The nation’s high hopes for governance reform got a couple of boosts this week. On Tuesday the Cabinet Cluster on Good Governance and Anti-Corruption, chaired by President Benigno Aquino 3rd himself, adopted the Good Governance and Anti-Corruption (GGAC) Plan for 2012-16, presented by Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.

The five-year GGAC program would integrate and make accessible to citizens the budget and operations information from various official databases. It is among the many initiatives in the Philippine Government Action Plan (PGAP) for transparency and accountability, which the Philippines submitted to the Open Government Partnership launched in New York in September and was due to have been finalized last month.

The day after GGAC Plan was adopted, PNoy told his Communications Group to ‘push ahead’ with the long-delayed Freedom of Information bill. Despite his campaign promise to prioritize the FOI measure, once in power, Aquino backed off from pushing it. For more than a year Palace officials led by Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said the legislation needed to be carefully crafted so it would not hamper government work.

Before reform advocates cheer, of course, the GGAC Plan and the FOI push need to be actually carried out — a tall order in this administration outside of impeachments and pet bills of the President. So that the initiatives don’t go the way of another acronymed program, the overly hyped but embarrassingly delayed Public-Private Partnership (PPP), President Aquino should apply TTT to GGAC and FOI. That’s tasking, targets, and timetables, so it is crystal-clear who are assigned to deliver what results and when.

TTT is pretty much the objective of another laudable reform (at least on paper) being crafted: the “unified and integrated” Results-Based Performance Management System (RBPMS) across all department and agencies in the government. Last month President Aquino created a task force to draw up the RBPMS bringing together various performance assessment mechanisms used by various agencies.

Among those report card processes are the National Economic and Development Authority’s Results Matrix; the Department of Budget and Management’s Organizational Performance Indicators Framework (OPIF); the Civil Service Commission’s Office Performance Evaluation System (OPES), and Career Executive Service Board’s Career Executive Service Performance Evaluation System (CESPES).

In addition, the Commission on Audit’s mandate includes evaluating government operations, to check if state-funded programs and projects deliver as stipulated in budgets and contracts.

Created by Administrative Order No. 25, the RBPMS task force is co-chaired by Budget Secretary Abad and Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa, with Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga, Presidential Management Staff Head Julia Abad, and Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima as members.

One important suggestion: The Palace should request the Civil Service Commission and the Commission on Audit to participate. As PNoy may need to be reminded, CSC and COA are independent constitutional bodies which cannot be ordered to simply adopt an evaluation system created and promulgated by the Executive branch. (Nor can they be charmed with barrels of pork.)

Considering that it could take 1-2 years to fully cascade a new evaluation system across the 1.3-million-strong bureaucracy, plus another year or two to impact on actual agency and personnel performance, the task force should aim to get the RBPMS done by June, so that governance improvements are felt well before President Aquino’s term ends.

In GGAC, FOI, RBPMS and any other governance reforms, however, the indispensable ingredient for success is ROL: rule of law. If protocols, procedures, policies and penalties set down for agencies, officials and personnel are not enforced and followed without fail or favor, then the whole system breaks down. People jump queues, skirt sanctions, exploit connections, slip through loopholes, and otherwise get around the rules and get away with what they can.

Now here’s the real problem: the Aquino Administration’s proven double standard in fighting corruption undermines the rule of law. So does PNoy’s penchant of asserting his preferred legal interpretation against the competent collegial judgment of duly mandated bodies, from the Rizal Park hostage crisis investigation committee to the Supreme Court. Also hurtful to governance standards are presidential appointments and removals which seem to go against meritocracy, like this week’s replacement of the overseas employment administrator.

Plainly, if shooting buddies, party allies and family friends are let off the hook while the rest of the bureaucracy hang on it, if the judgment of constitutionally empowered entities are publicly rebuffed and defied, and if established norms and rules are set aside for political expediency, then the entire alphabet soup of governance initiatives would not satisfy the nation’s hunger for meaningful reform.

Far more than crafting impressive reform programs, it is their impartial implementation that is the real task and challenge in turning the nation’s hopes for change into reality. –RICARDO SALUDO, Manila Times

(The first part was published on Wednesday.)

Ricardo Saludo serves Bahay ng Diyos Foundation for church repair. He heads the Center for Strategy, Enterprise & Intelligence, publisher of The CenSEI Report on national and global issues ( report@censeisolutions.com).