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.

	The Office of the President has the biggest number of undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, advisers, assistants and consultants in excess of caps set in law, and without civil service eligibility. [photo courtesy of op.gov.ph website]

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.

From 2002 and until he was nominated to the CSC last Monday, Saludo had served as secretary to the Cabinet and is known everywhere as a rabid defender and loyal functionary of Arroyo.

Saludo now recognizes that the “bloated bureaucracy” is “clearly an issue” but whether he will move against his boss of seven years, and their political friends and allies, bears watching.

	PREVIOUSLY PART 1 delves into the virtual capture by political appointees of senior government positions previously reserved for career service personnel.

On October 2, 2004, Arroyo issued Executive Order 366 directing “a strategic review of the operations and organizations of the Executive Branch and providing options and incentives for government employees who may be affected by the rationalization of the functions and agencies.”

The EO instructed all departments and agencies of the executive branch, as well as government-owned and -controlled corporations, to scale down, phase out, abolish, deactivate, merge, consolidate and regularize any and all agencies that do not deliver “quality public service.”

As well, the EO sought to rationalize and improve “the quality and efficiency of government services delivery by eliminating/minimizing overlaps and duplication.”

Last January, members of the Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE) marched to protest what they claimed was the impending retrenchment of about 420,000 civil servants.

But the CSC has clarified that only the 700,000 employees of the executive branch, and not all the 1.4-million civil service workforce, would be affected by the rationalization program.

POLITICAL HIRES EXEMPTED
Under EO 366, an employee may choose, “on a voluntary basis,” to opt for early retirement or transfer to a similar position in another office.

COURAGE national president Ferdinand Gaite avers that last January alone, a total of 8,120 personnel from the National Food Authority, Metro Manila Development Authority, Senate, Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Internal Revenue, and Department of Social Welfare and Development were in line for retrenchment.

In July 2005, at a dialogue on EO 366 attended by 90 managers and union leaders of national government agencies, civil servants decried the exemption that the order accorded Arroyo's executive hires.

A report said that government workers expressed their “anxiety” at the forum thus: “Presidential and political appointees must be the first to go. In past reorganization efforts, although positions were dissolved, others were created by political action, especially at the top management level.”

Indeed, Arroyo is the biggest violator of her own EO.

Karina Constantino-David ended her seven-year term as CSC chairperson on February 1, 2008, with a final broadside. “You didn't have this kind of excess in any previous administration,” David told the PCIJ in an interview.

A 2008 CSC study that David disclosed last January shows that Arroyo has hired an excess of 81 undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, apart from 53 presidential advisers and presidential assistants, and an unknown number of consultants.

The Administrative Code of 1987 and various laws, executive orders and administrative orders stipulate that there should be at most 163 undersecretaries and assistant secretaries in the 24 executive departments.

But the Office of the President has the biggest number of excess hires for these positions at 31, followed by the Department of National Defense with eight, according to the study.

The Department of Agrarian Reform comes in third with seven excess hires, then the departments of Health, Justice, Foreign Affairs, and Interior and Local Government, with four excess hires each, the study said.