by Sheila S. Coronel

JOSEPH ESTRADA is a casual man. He squirms in a barong and mumbles incoherently when asked to speak before a well-heeled crowd. He is most at home in the company of his kind: Scotch-guzzling men who grunt rather than talk, who are happiest when backslapping, wheeling-dealing and trading jokes. In short, he is the quintessential Pinoy macho: kind to his friends, cavalier with his women, and generous to his drinking buddies. He takes nothing terribly seriously, including perhaps the presidency.

Thus, when under criticism recently for appointing assorted buddies to various government posts, Estrada was incredulous, feeling that he was, again, unfairly being targeted by a trigger-happy press. Neither could his friends understand what the furor was all about. Their collective reaction was best summed up by Rolando T. Meyer, known in the movie world as a sidekick of action star and presidential pal Fernando Poe Jr. In a television interview after taking his oath as a member of the board of the government-owned casino company, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor), a post that carries with it some P2 million a year in director’s fees, Meyer said, nonplussed: “Weather-weather lang ‘yan.”

It was a typical response. Erap and Co. have perfected this lumpen mockery of the English tongue and put it to effective use whenever they are held to account. “Weather-weather” is the kanto boy translation of the Tagalog “pana-panahon,” meaning to each his own time. What it essentially meant was this: Everyone knows each administration leads its retinue to feast on the public trough. It’s our turn now, so what’s the fuss all about?

It was a statement that was both refreshingly honest and horribly cynical, simultaneously subversive (because it mocks elite pretensions to a delicadeza they never actually practice) and sensible (because if all past presidents had appointed their friends, why shouldn’t Estrada?). It sums up Erap’s unique contribution to Philippine public life: He translates the prerogatives of power into the language of the streets, making them seem acceptable and normal. After all, he challenges everyone, who among the most righteous have not favored their friends? Or for that matter, who among them have not cheated on their wives?

By speaking plainly, Estrada exposes the hypocrisy of political discourse, thereby depriving his critics of the moral high ground. The president does not deny his sins; he merely cracks jokes about them. On one hand, this is such a relief after the deathless denials at which politicians have become so adept. But on the other hand, the jocular, offhand way he turns conventional morality on its head and makes his version seem eminently sensible and acceptable makes no morality possible. That is why the Catholic Church and the other vanguards of public morals do not know how to react. How do you deal with a sinner who makes you laugh? Who confesses to his sins with devastating nonchalance?

WITH ERAP ESTRADA, what you see is what you get. He is, essentially, as he has always said, pare, a charming rascal who expects to get away with his rascality as he always had. In two decades of his political life, he has never been called to account: not for his association with underworld characters nor for the dubious business practices of his cohorts, not even for the murders perpetrated by his men when he was head of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC).

For all his mumbling and bumbling, Estrada has a very sophisticated understanding of the unaccountability of power. That is why he can afford to be so cavalier. Take the simple matter of presidential advisers, consultants and assistants. Every president has them, but until Estrada took over, it was thought that Fidel Ramos had made maximum use of the system by appointing a couple of dozen cronies, colleagues and friends to positions where they were not actually of much use as advisers, but gave them an excuse to hang around the Palace, do the odd things a president needs to get done and also to display their credentials for whatever perks they were worth (everything from priority seating in concerts and restaurants to bigtime business deals, as in the case of Ramos adviser Emilio “Lito” Osmeña who is believed to have used his position to advance his business interests).

Erap, after five months in office, has appointed over 60 people to such positions, so many in fact that the Office of the President has trouble keeping track of them, so many it has become laughable, like invitations to a wedding party that got out of hand. The list of presidential consultants, assistants and advisers includes some really worthwhile individuals whose talents can be put to good use, but also a lot of other hangers-on from business, politics, the movies and, Malacañang insiders swear, God knows where else.

Many of the appointments were predictable. Former racecar champion Roberto Aventajado, for example, a long-time and influential Erap aide, was made presidential adviser on economic affairs and head of the presidential committee on flagship programs and projects. Aventajado, however, is consulted on a wide range of issues, most of them only marginally economic. Among other things, he negotiated for the release of Italian priest Luciano Benedetti who was kidnapped in Mindanao. Together with the powerful brothers whom Estrada had known from his San Juan boyhood—Executive Secretary Ronaldo and businessman Manuel Zamora—Aventajado also played a role brokering the transfer of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) shares from the Cojuangco family to various interested parties.

Beyond his inner circle, Estrada awarded party favors to the likes of plastics tycoon William Gatchalian, who was appointed presidential consultant on the welfare of overseas Filipino workers and Julio Tan, the uncle of one of taipan Lucio Tan’s wives, who was appointed presidential consultant on Chinese affairs. It is well known that Erap has the support of the ethnic Chinese business community. Lucio Tan was the biggest contributor to his presidential campaign. Another Chinese-Filipino contributor, wealthy Zamboanga businessman Wee Dee Ping, was made presidential adviser on Mindanao.

These posts bring with them little or no remuneration. But they have a certain cachet, especially in the business community, where the perception of closeness to Malacañang is an invaluable asset as it opens doors to contracts, licenses, tax cuts and other forms of preferential treatment from government entities. As every businessman knows, a reputation for being “malakas” or “malapit sa poder” (close to the powerful) makes many things possible in a country where politics and business are so intimately intertwined.

So far so predictable. The Philippine tradition, like the American one, gives the president tremendous powers to appoint members of the bureaucracy, and indeed, to create new positions as he or she sees fit. So much discretion is given the president that in the Philippines, as in the United States, the system has encouraged the large-scale use of bureaucratic appointments for patronage or as rewards to family, loyal followers and generous contributors. Such powers were even expanded during martial law by Marcos, who gave himself the power to appoint officials up to the middle reaches of the civil service. That power has not been much diminished since then; neither have Marcos’s successors been chary about using it.

Thus, since 1986, despite the shift from an authoritarian to a democratic form of government, the president still has the appointive power over all members of the career executive service from the rank of provincial director or department service chief up. At the education department, this means that the president has discretion over everyone from provincial superintendents to the education secretary. He also appoints ambassadors, military officers from colonel up, justices of various courts, and a whole slew of assorted functionaries. Altogether, according to Elmor Juridico, executive director of the Career Executive Service Board (CESB), the president has the power to name people to 3,175 career executive positions in various government departments and agencies.

In addition, 2,488 positions in 60 government-owned and controlled corporations are subject to presidential approval, according to the CESB. For example, at the Social Security System, which administers billions of pesos of employee contributions, the president has discretion over 229 posts. The figure is 279 for the Development Bank of the Philippines and 374 for the Land Bank, both government banks with a history of crony lending. (Estrada, however, has given his finance minister, former banker Edgardo Espiritu, near total discretion over appointments to government financial institutions. Espiritu, in turn, has placed his banking cronies at their helm.)

Excluded from the CESB’s account are the non-career, contractual posts that the president and other high officials can create at their own pleasure. Also excluded are appointments to the boards of various government councils and commissions, government corporations like Pagcor, and sequestered firms like San Miguel Corp. These directorships, most of which come with generous perks, have traditionally been given as rewards to presidential cronies.

All told, presidential appointees make up about two percent of the total number of civil servants (close to 300,000 as of 1998, if teaching, medical and military/police personnel are excluded). Still, the discretion over appointments to the top and middle rungs of the bureaucracy and to corporations that have traditionally been milking cows of well-connected businesspeople endows the Philippine president with a power not enjoyed by most heads of state. In addition, the president can also wield some influence over the appointees of his appointees down the ladder of the bureaucracy, so he can, in theory, have a say in the appointments to thousands of other positions. Contrast this with Britain, where the prime minister can appoint only heads of ministries while leaving the rest of the bureaucracy virtually untouched.

It has too often been said that Philippine practice stunts bureaucratic professionalization. When so many of the best positions in the civil service are subject to presidential whims, efforts to form a professional corps of civil servants are continuously frustrated. Moreover, as appointees are beholden to political patrons for their posts, they view government merely as an employment agency, and a government post simply a reward, rather than a responsibility.