Friday, January 05, 2007 Speak out: Is change imminent? By Dr. Lindy C. Morrell
FOR many decades now, top political leaders have been promised great things for the people but the distance between promise and delivery has always been kilometric.
In the public administration landscape of the Philippines the political dictum has been: "Promises are made to be spoken but not delivered."
Our politicians are strong advocates for change providing such change redounds to their personal political advantage. Otherwise the people are always shortchanged.
We keep changing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
We changed our constitution no less than six times while political dynasties are here to stay.
We change our national policies so that foreign investors think that the Philippines is unique. It has a political weather bureau so unpredictable in its impact.
We change the chief of staff in the Armed Forces with revolving door regularity. This causes erosion of morale in the organization.
We change the career path of retired military generals, naming them to top positions in the civilian bureaucracy even if they are not fit for such critical offices having been trained in the school of arms and warfare.
We allowed retired generals to run the Philippine Veterans Bank, whose banking operations has become a general disaster for war veterans.
Generals divest even the retirement funds for retired military officials and personnel by retiring them from the monetary mainstream to their private pockets.
We are trying to imitate Indonesia, which has an elite “militocracy.” Our country's elective positions are teeming not with civil service eligible but highly "elisible" (junkable) occupants.
We hold regularly unusual electoral exercises that can be called "pay-elections" where affluent citizens pay their way to public office through the highest bidder.
Other Asian countries marvel at the way we conduct vote marketing. A number of Asians are coming here to learn from the way we conduct our elections.
It is unfortunate that our own erudite constitutional experts have structured in our recent constitution (from the 1935 Commonwealth Constitution to our 1987 Constitution) an unbelievably inferior criterion for qualifying presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
The qualifications are simplistic: native-born citizen, minimum read and write capability, age requirement that characterizes physical maturity but not intellectual wisdom and managerial capability seasoned by a reasonable track record of experience and training.
We don't allow a butcher to perform surgical operations. We don't allow a jeepney driver to fly a jet plane.
We even impose strict qualifications for a government messenger: must be civil service eligible, a college graduate, has good moral character and possesses experience relating to the job requirements. Yet we allow a mere nincompoop to manage the destiny of our country by allowing him to pilot our Ship of State.
And the citizenry cannot remove by direct vote an undeserving president. We have to rely on the process of impeachment that previous experiences have proven to be sadly unsatisfactory failures.
Why not incorporate in our constitution the process of popular public recall to oust an undeserving president?
We challenge our lawmakers to enact this process of presidential removal once this vital constitutional provision is enacted.
This is the 21st century. We cannot solve today's problem with yesterday's solutions. For 2007 are we going to change for the better or remain as we are?
"To err is human, to forgive divine." But to keep on erring is plain stupidity.
