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Saturday, April 23, 2005
Roperos: Premium for excellence
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
The report that the Cebu City Government has hired 45 honor graduates came to us as a whiff of fresh air, one that gives us hope that the mayor who has been the center of all sorts of “politically” counter-productive pronouncements and policy decisions has latched on to something truly enriching for the public good.
This is the first time I have come across a deliberate recruitment of “the best and the brightest” among the young in the city. And I am trembling with excitement to see the results.
What Mayor Tomas Osmeña has done is a novel civil service undertaking, and if it is going to be a permanent policy it could become a recruitment model for other cities and municipalities where politics and political loyalties are the basic guide in the hiring process.
Giving premium to excellence is really the best way to improve the delivery of services to the people and at the same time push our young in school to strive for excellence rather than just be content with debilitating mediocrity.
One of the favorite practices of politics-oriented local political leaders is the careful recruitment of people that fits their personal needs and biases and not necessarily the needs of civil service. In most cases, the first item in their set of criteria is the political loyalty of the potential recruit.
Second is a recruit’s usefulness to the leader’s political cause. Third, his or her ability to follow instructions. High intelligence does not matter so long as one has the basic qualifications.
Which is tantamount to saying that the general qualification for one to become member of a local politician’s staff in his public office is just that, regardless of one’s intelligence. In a sense, it is a practice that gives premium to mediocrity, as educational attainment becomes secondary to the political usefulness of the recruit.
If you ask me, I agree with the remark of a retired military man who said that the problem with the Philippine National Police today is that it started with “brainless, mediocre political recruits” to fill up positions in the police organization in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
And so, to him, “mediocrity breeds mediocrity,” so that those mediocre political recruits also sadly recruited mediocre replacements. It is good that somehow the vicious cycle has been broken, and the police recruitment process has tremendously changed the profile of the new police officers.
Hopefully, the trail that Mayor Tom has blazed would signal the blazing of similar trails by other local political leaders not only in the province but also in other areas of the region, or the country.
Excellence in any endeavor, my late public school teacher father who started teaching in Grade 4 when he finished Grade VII, is a goal that one should consistently strive for and should never ignore even if the reward he gets is not commensurate to the efforts he expended in achieving the goal.
The trust that the city mayor has endowed the 45 “best and brightest” of his choice should be taken by the recruits themselves as a challenge not only to their brilliance but also to their diligence, integrity and quality of performance. They are themselves trailblazers, pioneers in this innovative project.
Failure on the part of the recruits to deliver could be taken by the mayor’s critics as a count against his innovation. It would show being a magna or a cum laude is no guarantee for excellence in performance.
(April 23, 2005 issue)
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