by Isa Lorenzo and Malou Mangahas
PRESIDENT GLORIA Macapagal Arroyo herself gives the lie to her administration’s avowed efforts to trim the bureaucracy of excess personnel.
A 2008 study by the Civil Service Commission lists Arroyo’s office as the agency with the biggest number of undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, advisers, assistants and consultants in excess of caps set in law, and without civil service eligibility.
What to do with these Arroyo appointees is the acid test that Ricardo Lirag Saludo must hurdle in his new post as CSC chairman with a fixed seven-year tenure.
When politics pollute civil service
by Isa Lorenzo and Malou Mangahas
THE RECENT nomination of Ricardo Lirag Saludo as chairperson of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) effectively signals the capture by political appointees of managerial positions in the bureaucracy that had previously been reserved to career service personnel.
A rabid defender and loyal functionary of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Saludo joined the government service in March 2001 as a political appointee and over the last seven years opted against securing career service eligibility.
Perspective
by Nepomuceno Malaluan
THREE QUESTIONS would be left unanswered should the Supreme Court refuse to budge on its March 25, 2008 ruling in the Neri v. Senate Committee case. Equally — if not more — important, however, is the final decision’s bearing on how the executive and the court would hence be dealing with questions involving presidential communications in Congressional inquiries. This is why transparency and accountability advocates are hoping that the Supreme Court will reconsider and allow the Senate to compel disclosure over the claim of executive privilege.
by Nepomuceno Malaluan
THIS NO one questions: The Senate or the House of Representatives or any of their respective committees may conduct inquiries in aid of legislation. They may also request the heads of departments to appear before them and be heard on any matter pertaining to their departments.
Sidebar
by Roel R. Landingin
THE DUAL nature of overseas development assistance (ODA) loans as both foreign aid and support for businesses in the lending country has taken an interesting, if confusing, turn in the case of loans and guarantees provided by the United Kingdom.
The NEDA lists the United Kingdom as the Philippines’ fourth biggest source of development finance, which comes in the form of guarantees provided by the UK’s Export Credit and Guarantee Department (ECGD).
by Roel R. Landingin
FOR ANTONIO Molano Jr. and other government engineers at the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), it felt like being in “Groundhog Day,” the Bill Murray movie about a cynical TV reporter who kept reliving the same day over and over again.
Over a span of four years, Molano and his colleagues at the DPWH bids and awards committee (BAC) held three rounds of bidding for two World Bank-funded road projects in Mindanao and the Visayas.
Sidebar
by Roel R. Landingin
FORMER ECONOMIC planning secretary Felipe Medalla may have spoken in jest during a forum of previous chiefs of the National Economic and Development Agency (NEDA) last September when he said there are two NEDAs.
There is, he said, “NEDA sa Pasig,” which houses the offices of the director general and staff, and which supposedly embodies the technical side of the agency.
The perils and pitfalls of aid
by Roel R. Landingin
FOREIGN AID inflows to the Philippines are soaring to their highest levels in about six years, but the availability of more money for government projects has not made life any easier for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Filipino taxpayers.
Indeed, the latest controversy to rock her seven-year reign stems from the sharp surge in official development assistance (ODA) from China, an emerging economic behemoth, and the Philippines’s growing inability to impose its procurement policies and procedures on ODA projects.
Public Eye
by Jaileen F. Jimeno
HE WAS still in his last year in college when he landed a job at the alternative newspaper Malaya in 1985. That was at the tail-end of the Marcos rule, but the regime’s grip on media was still strong and journalists who dared to criticize the Palace often wound up behind bars or went missing. Yet journalist Ellen Tordesillas says the young Ben Evardone remained true to his profession and steadfastly pounded his Commission on Elections beat even though he had already been warned the police could arrest him anytime.
Public Eye
by Jaileen F. Jimeno
PLL…WHAT? Medy who?It had always been an obscure office, at least as far as the public was concerned. But now that the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office (PLLO) seems to have suddenly emerged from the shadows and pushed under a very glaring — and very public — spotlight, few are liking what they think they see: […]
