Wednesday, April 16, 2008 Carvajal: From the bottom up By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
CEBU City Councilor Edgardo Labella’s proposal to promulgate a Code of Ethics for City Hall employees comes as a welcome shock to me. Welcome because government employees badly need a code of ethics but shock because the fact that it is being proposed now could only mean it has been non-existent all this time.
While the mere promulgation of a code of ethics does not guarantee good behavior, at least it helps that everybody knows how government employees are supposed to behave in office. We are proud, for instance, to have in Sun.Star a code of ethics that all our journalists have to swear and sign to be guided by. It does not guarantee proper behavior for all but it does guarantee that we can spot and punish the exceptions, the violators.
It is only fair that government employees also go by some code. All professions have a code of ethics and civil service is a profession. It will not guarantee a stop to the existing corruption at the bottom among petty bureaucrats but it will be a start.
At least the employees will know what kind of behavior is expected of them and the citizenry will know how to judge the propriety of a government employee’s behavior.
Right now, people complain in an accepting sort of way how civil servants make money for the smallest and simplest service they render to citizens. The public reluctantly gives money to civil servants because they have no choice if they want some government transaction done. With a code of ethics the public can probably work to have a civil servant kicked out of office for violation of a provision in the code of ethics.
When I wrote about coming up with a new breed of parents who will instill honesty in their children, I was referring precisely to those working in our civil service. Many of the youth, the hope of the fatherland, have parents in government service (including so many teachers in our public schools) who model a corrupt way of life to their children. When they do this the fatherland loses its hope of replacing the present crop of corrupt high government officials with a new breed of honest and decent community leaders.
Corruption at the top is too far away and too entrenched for ordinary citizens to directly attack. But we can remove the ground from under the feet of the people on top by eradicating the petty corruption of civil servants at the base of our civil service structure. For this bottoms-up strategy the promulgation of a code of ethics would be a good and welcome start.
One cannot build a house on weak foundations. Petty corruption at the bottom nourishes and perpetuates corruption at the upper levels of the structure. We must reform the top levels by working our way from the bottom up.
