Evaluating government performance

The pathetic action of an irredeemable failure! Such is the sizzling depiction by unrepentant critics of President Bongbong Marcos’ ongoing Cabinet revamp.

In their feverish imagination and in their pandering to the current piety after the midterms debacle, these fringe provocateurs are now snapping at anyone who cares to listen.

Yet, their routine projections of an imploding “troublesome” presidency has, fairly speaking, remained toothless so far and hasn’t provoked a clear death sentence on the incumbent.

But then, what else can we expect from antsy critics whose version of the truth comes from a moral perfectionism siphoned off drug war murders?

That said, we however are not saying that we didn’t get the President’s memo.

For us, the main point of Marcos’ memo is his tacit acknowledgement of a growing sense of collective self-despair regarding his administration’s performance.

If there wasn’t that rough patch, there’s no sense in him going to the extent of booting out some of his low performing Cabinet members.

At any rate, no one probably better understands the importance of performance than Marcos himself, who long ago quoted the proverbial maxim that “performance is the best politics.”

By quoting the dictum, he seemingly understood that in our brand of democracy a sitting President determines the public’s image of what is government.

While some politically sophisticated Filipinos argue the whole government should be judged when it’s time to evaluate performance, many see, courtesy of our tragic historical quirks, the President as the only image of the government.

So much so that Filipinos don’t always know what constitutes the executive branch and what does not.

A recent hilarious example of this was a noisy Duterte acolyte publicly soiling his pants when he ignorantly repeated the false report that the Civil Service Commission (CSC) head had heeded the President’s call to resign. The CSC is a constitutionally independent body not at the beck and call of the President.

Anyway, such relevant points must first be made very clear since how Filipinos generally look at the government determines the main criteria they use in perceiving the government’s performance.

At this point, it should be pointed out that many Filipinos often can’t answer the related question: Are you evaluating performance as a citizen of a democracy or as a taxpayer consuming services one paid for?

Here, if we’re evaluating performance as a citizen, we are emphasizing “substantial rights,” meaning our right to speak about the quality of the government.

But should we evaluate it as a consumer or taxpayer, we are essentially talking about “procedural rights,” meaning our right to be heard and our right to redress should government services fail.

Now, sorting out the confusion can get pretty messy that we sometimes end up needlessly arguing about performance using different perspectives.

Anyway, the main point here is that evaluating the government’s performance is a complicated, complex affair needing us to be careful.

Despite that common pitfall, it doesn’t mean that high-ranking administration officials remain clueless as to what Filipinos generally use in evaluating performance.

Or, that they won’t strive at making it clear to Filipinos where they are coming from and why they are doing this thing and not the other thing.

Which brings us to the other point: what to do when Filipinos start perceiving the administration’s performance is bad, when the critics have scored points?

And the answer seems to be — this administration has abjectly failed to properly communicate what it’s been doing to alleviate our common lot.

In short, Marcos’ marching orders to his Cabinet seems to be that performance should not only be good, it should be seen as good.