Pay cuts
Pay cuts
Updated 11:48pm (Mla time) Sept 19, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 20, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
WE support the President's directive to all heads of government-owned and -controlled corporations to cut their pay. Some GOCC executives, President Macapagal-Arroyo said last Friday, had in fact already agreed to take "voluntary pay cuts while reorienting their respective organizations to the imperatives of discipline and effectiveness."
We shall see. This is not the first time that the issue of excessive pay has hit the headlines. In June 2001, Ms Arroyo issued Executive Order 20, setting a cap of P100,000 a month on the salaries of GOCC executives. But the recent list of the 100 best-paid executives in government service, topped by the P9-million salaries of the chair of the Philippine National Oil Company and the chair of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, covers the years 2002 and 2003. In other words, after EO 20 took effect.
Inevitably, the ghost of political will raises its hoary head again. If the President failed to implement her own order at a time when her mandate consisted mainly of the reformist Edsa II agenda, what makes her think she will succeed this time?
Her own reading of her new post-election mandate runs against the principles of self-sacrifice she now invokes. From her analyses of her victory, to her appointments to the Cabinet and other sensitive posts, to the term-sharing arrangements in both chambers of Congress that she encouraged among her allies, the President has been nothing but political. She has recognized her many debts of gratitude, and is actively finding ways, sometimes very creative ways, to pay them.
These actions contrast markedly with the new, post-crisis-declaration rhetoric of shared pain, of graduated sacrifice.
Does this mean the new cut-your-pay-or-else-you're-fired directive issued last Friday is doomed to fail? Not necessarily.
The use of the word "crisis" is a milestone; the President will be loath to turn back, after willing herself to get to the point where she could use the c-word. And the decision to make the eight new tax measures the centerpiece of her legislative agenda is a true fork in the road; she has risked political convenience by taking the road less taken.
Burdening the straight-shooting budget secretary with the responsibilities of the now-defunct Presidential Committee on Effective Governance is also a flexing of political will. Secretary Emilia Boncodin is now tasked to go over the controversial sector, "GOCC to GOCC," to make sure that they comply with the pay cuts. "I told [Boncodin], if they defy my authority, then they are disobeying, which could be a ground for removal," the President said. To belabor the obvious, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye issued a statement which read, in part: "This campaign will be based on a compliance scorecard on pay cuts and austerity measures among the GOCCs. This will be a tool for deciding who among the presidential appointees would stay or leave."
We cannot imagine that the checking of the compliance scorecard will take too long. If we parse the President's own management-speak, we find that lack of discipline and effectiveness-in other words, lack of performance-is something she already assumes. Will we have to wait another year before we see well-paid heads roll?
We think that Boncodin and the President already know which GOCC fat cats have been napping on the job. Many of them have used their nine lives in the first three years of the Arroyo administration. It is time to be rid of them.
Let's begin with a simple test. Which of the GOCC heads already in office between 2001 and 2003 followed EO 20? As far as we can tell, only SSS administrator Corazon de la Paz cut her pay to fit the guidelines (contrary to the careless grandstanding of a sidelined Cebu politician, Sen. Sergio Osmena III, who accused De la Paz of doing the opposite). What does that make of the rest? Sergio Apostol and Honeygirl de Leon are no longer with the PNOC or the PCSO. But the scion of a Cebu political family, Winston Garcia, is still chair of the Government Service Insurance System. Last week, he decided to cut his pay to P160,000-a classic case of doing too little, too late.
What would Boncodin make of him? The answer to this and similar questions will determine whether the President's new campaign will meet the fate of the old.
Updated 11:48pm (Mla time) Sept 19, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 20, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
WE support the President's directive to all heads of government-owned and -controlled corporations to cut their pay. Some GOCC executives, President Macapagal-Arroyo said last Friday, had in fact already agreed to take "voluntary pay cuts while reorienting their respective organizations to the imperatives of discipline and effectiveness."
We shall see. This is not the first time that the issue of excessive pay has hit the headlines. In June 2001, Ms Arroyo issued Executive Order 20, setting a cap of P100,000 a month on the salaries of GOCC executives. But the recent list of the 100 best-paid executives in government service, topped by the P9-million salaries of the chair of the Philippine National Oil Company and the chair of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, covers the years 2002 and 2003. In other words, after EO 20 took effect.
Inevitably, the ghost of political will raises its hoary head again. If the President failed to implement her own order at a time when her mandate consisted mainly of the reformist Edsa II agenda, what makes her think she will succeed this time?
Her own reading of her new post-election mandate runs against the principles of self-sacrifice she now invokes. From her analyses of her victory, to her appointments to the Cabinet and other sensitive posts, to the term-sharing arrangements in both chambers of Congress that she encouraged among her allies, the President has been nothing but political. She has recognized her many debts of gratitude, and is actively finding ways, sometimes very creative ways, to pay them.
These actions contrast markedly with the new, post-crisis-declaration rhetoric of shared pain, of graduated sacrifice.
Does this mean the new cut-your-pay-or-else-you're-fired directive issued last Friday is doomed to fail? Not necessarily.
The use of the word "crisis" is a milestone; the President will be loath to turn back, after willing herself to get to the point where she could use the c-word. And the decision to make the eight new tax measures the centerpiece of her legislative agenda is a true fork in the road; she has risked political convenience by taking the road less taken.
Burdening the straight-shooting budget secretary with the responsibilities of the now-defunct Presidential Committee on Effective Governance is also a flexing of political will. Secretary Emilia Boncodin is now tasked to go over the controversial sector, "GOCC to GOCC," to make sure that they comply with the pay cuts. "I told [Boncodin], if they defy my authority, then they are disobeying, which could be a ground for removal," the President said. To belabor the obvious, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye issued a statement which read, in part: "This campaign will be based on a compliance scorecard on pay cuts and austerity measures among the GOCCs. This will be a tool for deciding who among the presidential appointees would stay or leave."
We cannot imagine that the checking of the compliance scorecard will take too long. If we parse the President's own management-speak, we find that lack of discipline and effectiveness-in other words, lack of performance-is something she already assumes. Will we have to wait another year before we see well-paid heads roll?
We think that Boncodin and the President already know which GOCC fat cats have been napping on the job. Many of them have used their nine lives in the first three years of the Arroyo administration. It is time to be rid of them.
Let's begin with a simple test. Which of the GOCC heads already in office between 2001 and 2003 followed EO 20? As far as we can tell, only SSS administrator Corazon de la Paz cut her pay to fit the guidelines (contrary to the careless grandstanding of a sidelined Cebu politician, Sen. Sergio Osmena III, who accused De la Paz of doing the opposite). What does that make of the rest? Sergio Apostol and Honeygirl de Leon are no longer with the PNOC or the PCSO. But the scion of a Cebu political family, Winston Garcia, is still chair of the Government Service Insurance System. Last week, he decided to cut his pay to P160,000-a classic case of doing too little, too late.
What would Boncodin make of him? The answer to this and similar questions will determine whether the President's new campaign will meet the fate of the old.
posted by Dante at 10:59 PM
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