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I. A POLITICAL SYSTEM DEFINES ITS BUREAUCRACY: That the Philippine government has consistently failed in satisfying the needs and growing expectations of the Filipino people is a fact rather than a perception. What is widely perceived however, is that such failure of government is only due to the inefficiency of its bureaucracy to produce and deliver public goods and services. To accept the perception that the inefficiency of the bureaucracy is the main culprit in the family re of government is to grant the dichotomization of the orientation of governance and the administration of its affairs. The form and substance of the bureaucracy as the main machinery of government is heavily defined by the latter's policies and politics. It cannot be expected to produce and deliver goods and services corresponding to the needs of the people if the policies of government are anti-people.
In the same manner that the bureaucracy cannot operate differently and independently of the ills of th e Philippine political system. A political system is based on its economic foundation thus it is beyond doubt that economic power makes political power. In a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society such as the Philippines, it is easy to conclude that the fo reign investors, their local counterparts such as the big comprador's and landlords, who are the main players in the economy, control the state thru their cohorts in government. That it is their business, to effectively manage the affairs of the bureaucracy y as a means and source of graft and corruption for further self-aggrandizement and their perpetuation in power. The basic issue of the mis prioritization and mis utilization of the national budget clearly represents that the business of governance depends on the interests of the power holders rather than the people they govern. The coming of the public debt aspect in the 80 s worsens the mis prioritization of government's annual budget in favor of foreign debt payment allocations and is usually followed by t he national defense budget, the sum of which account for about three-fourths (3 / 4) of its grand total.
As the foreign debt payment becomes automatic the government went into deficit spending, in order to correct this, the International Monetary Fund-World Bank (IMF-WB) prescribed the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) which included the austerity measures in further reducing the subsidy for social services and less amount for development programs. Such limitation is aggravated by the wastage of substantia l amount, about 30 % of that which goes to operations, that is pocketed by the politicians and the high bureaucrats thru wholesale graft and corruption and the pork-barrel system (fund allocations for congressmen's / senators ' pet / patron ghost projects). The acts of government to join the General Agreement on Tariff and Trades-World Trade Organization (GATT-WTO), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), both as instruments of imperialism, is to completely subjugate the interest of the Filipino people to the intensification of exploitation as the crisis of imperialism worsens. The corresponding inter-related policies of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization are meant to expand and intensify the opening of the Philippine economy to the inertia ble thirst for super profits of foreign monopolies.
As the same policies are cornerstones of the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) Philippines 2000 of the Ramos government, it is expected to worsen the delivery of public goods and services as such shall be left to the manipulation of the foreign investors and local capitalists. It is not surprising therefore, that the neverending saga of measures to attain a passing mark on accountability, efficiency, effectiveness, and economy of the bur eaucracy has far been records of mis accomplishments of set objectives. Such strategies of reorganization, decentralization, integrated area development, the public estate system, and participative delivery system to reform the bureaucracy have and cannot individually and all together address the mis performance of public organizations to function as expected by the public. Yet the government has conveniently blamed the inefficiency of its bureaucracy and reversely used efficiency as reason to design scheme s which in the end really result to the benefit of the politicians and the high bureaucrats. In reality, the bureaucracy and its efficiency is reduced to whose interests it serves. As a means to attain the end, it is trapped in a vicious cycle of being us ed to serve for the benefit of its power holders and then blamed its failure to public sector workers in serving the interest of the people.
Thus, once again, the effort of the Ramos administration to re-engineer the bureaucracy cannot escape the scrutiny that it is indeed another scheme to effectively pursue their own interests and that of their foreign masters. Their so called new orientation of governance towards less government and more private initiatives is by the way the best design fit to implement nt the three intertwined policies of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization or the Philippines 2000. As the inefficiency of the bureaucracy is a "ready-made" scapegoat of the anti-people orientation of government, reversely it uses efficiency as reason to continuously redesign it. The government has repeatedly and alternately used reorganization, decentralization, abolition, merger, integrated area development, public estate system, and participative service delivery as strategy of reforms. Yet, every attempt, in spite its grandiose design and optimistic targets failed to accomplish improvements in the performance of public organizations. More than the limitation of its design, the actual factors of t using or the protection or furtherance of vested interests among politicians and bureaucrats really define the outcome of implementation.
Reorganization as a Reform Strategy More often than not, programs to reorganize the bureaucracy focuses on its size whereby adopting staff reduction as permanent and main feature. It always reduces the issue to big and slow public organizations with more number of workers than needed and that this unnecessarily drains the national coffers. This raises real concern as w ave upon wave of implementation of this scheme curved nothing more than the print of the victimization of hundreds of thousands of civil servants who were dismissed without cause, to be later on replaced in greater quantity. It is incorrect to say that th e Philippine bureaucracy is big unless we are definite as to what the appropriate size should be. Comparatively however, the data of six years ago reveal that the ratio of government employees per 100 population in the Philippines rank four (4) from the l ones and twelve (12) from the highest worldwide ("A Study of Size, Growth and Rationalization of the Bureaucracy", by Joel V. Mangahas).
Among ASEAN countries, it only bettered Indonesia. Considering that the government has successfully laid-off 323, 441 or an average decline of 107, 813 per year since 1991, while the population increased, the ratio has correspondingly worsen. It is worth to note that the ratios increase as countries are considered with more developed economies and improved services. Likewise, the argument that the test of the bigness of the bureaucracy is to compare its growth rate with that of the population growth over a certain period of time is sweeping without checking if the ratio of the number of workers vis-a-vis the population has improved. As a matter of fact, the ratio barely increased by over one percent over thirty one (31) years from 1. 3 in 1951 to 2. 5 in 1990 (A Study... " Joel V. Mangahas).
Aptly stated by a study made by Joel V. Mangahas... "Although it is indeed true th at the government size of the Philippines in terms of public expenditure and the number of civil servants has been growing, the growth has been relatively small. To a great extent it can also be claimed that the present size of the Philippine public set r is appropriate or ""just right" (or even small) especially when related to growing administrative and pressing socio-economic problems of the nation. " Assuming without granting the bigness of the bureaucracy so that staff reduction is necessary, it is st ill a ridiculous scenario as it is a matter of fact that for every reorganization, the number of personnel increased despite massive lay-off. Far from addressing the problems of effectivity in the bureaucracy, it merely victimized hundreds of thousands of innocent civil servants who were retrenched en masse and the subsequent creation, abolition, re-creation, division, and what have you -- to simply satisfy specific wishes of those in power. In the early 70 s, the Marcos dictatorship thru its Integrated Reorganization Plan, massively purged government personnel who were suspected to be unfriendly to the dictatorship but who were eventually replaced in greater quantity presumed to be more loyal to President Marcos. Together with this is the appointment of for mer and active military officers to the top positions in vital offices which spurred the militarization of the bureaucracy.
The mushrooming of new agencies and offices which were created with the end purpose of facilitating and the granting of favors for the Marcos' benefactors also became a natural component of Marcos' daily pronouncements. As soon as it took over the government, the Aquino administration immediately launched her own purging campaign which resulted to the mass lay-off of 120, 000 who were mainly temporary, casual, and contractual workers (IBON Databank, 1990). Although the justification made for the purge were to attain a lean government and make it efficient, it can be seen as an attempt to "de-Marcosify" the bureaucracy which was support ed to break the padding or patronage system and thereby stunt the professionalization of the bureaucracy (IBON Databank, 1990). Yet it is wrong to grant the real intent of "de-Marcosification" as addressing the padding or patronage system in the bureaucracy y because the same was excessively practiced by the Aquino government. Thus, we soon realized that one by one, the power holders during the dictatorship have repositioned themselves to key government posts while the increase in the number of government em p losses was unprecedented. As whimsical as in the Marcos regime, Aquino abolished and created government agencies and offices depending on their need for personal aggrandizement.
Those who were disfavored during the time of Marcos hurriedly joined the bure autocratic power game and lost no time in recovering and even further increasing their wealth. The Ramos government has been so far successful in the implementation of the various schemes of staff reduction as it has laid-off a total of 328, 441 or an average of 107, 813 civil servants per year between 1991 - 1994 "A Comprehensive Employment Strategy Program... Public Sector Employment", by Patricia Sto. Tomas).
It has reduced the number of government personnel to the 1980 level yet, aside from the revelry of the Ramos administration for having been praised by the IMF-World Bank for faithfully implementing its conditionalities, the bureaucracy is still suffering from an image of bloated ness as the Filipino people remains deep in the worsening socio-economic crisis. Decentralization In 1991, the Aquino regime passed the Local Government Code (LGC) which it considered as a milestone step to address the problem of over centralization of government. The devolution of functions from the National Government Agencies (NGAs) to the Local Government Units (Lgus) is supposed to empower the latter to improve services to their respective constituents. However, contrary to its intent, the implementation of the LGC proved to be another arena of competition for turfs among th e various interest groups in government. While it relatively diffused the pressure from the national government as the Lgus became the receiving end of complaints and buffer of the NGAs, they remain incapable and unable to respond to even just the basic s oil services of the more than 75 % of the population who reside in the rural areas. As the functions and responsibilities were devolved, there were no corresponding change in the power structure and fund allocations in support of these.
The immediate impact was on the more than 100, 000 civil servants who were dislocated due to their transfer to the Lgus. They were either forced to resign, were not absorbed by the Lgus, or suffered reduction in pay due to lack of funds. The situation whereby the Chief Execu tives of the Lgus are mere dummies of the local landlords and the bureaucrat capitalists is perpetuated. The Lgus are still beggars for funds for their projects from the national leadership which treats the grant of funds as favor to the local executives. The high cost of local elections also make them subservient to those who can finance and provide the force for their candidacy. While in power, the preoccupation of Local Executives is to pay for their political debts and recover with interest their own c ampalian costs thru favors and government contracts.
Integrated Area Development (IAD) Approach This approach traces its lineage from decentralization and the matrix type of organization wherein it departs from specific agency. It focuses its efforts on a particular program into the coordination of activities of various public offices within a spatial location under a lead agency. It is supposed to institutionalize a multi sectoral orientation to improve the quality of services and development efforts with in a given geographical area more specially in a rural setting "Tensions in the Troubled Bureaucracy... " by Danilo R. Reyes). This approach was heavily funded by the World Bank (WB) during the Marcos dictatorship and was taken advantage to over concentrate in a few agencies, like the defunct Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS), National Council for Integrated Area Development (NACIAD), and the Metro Manila Authority (MMA), the resources of government. It made easier the mis utilization of public funds as th e rest of the bureaucracy became second flinger's to these super public organizations which are within the direct control of the conjugal dictatorship.
In the same manner that the Lgus became easy prey to the wishes of President Ma...
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