Three weeks into the Aquino presidency and less than a week away from his State of the Nation Address debut, I’d still like to ask our new leaders: where’s the beef?

Older readers may remember this line from an American hamburger chain TV commercial years ago, asked by an old lady who looks in vain for a decent-sized meat patty between the buns.

In the context of the new administration’s Gloria-phobia, and taking another colloquial usage of the word “beef” to mean criticism or objection, my question to the members of the erstwhile opposition who are now in power might also be paraphrased thus: where is whatever it is that you were complaining about?

Early on, after the first couple of meetings of the new Cabinet, we read ominous rumblings in the press about various unspecified irregularities that had taken place under the previous administration. But thereafter, a deafening silence descended from the doomsayers. Were those leaked stories leakier than they had thought?

In the policy area, after months of excoriating the size of the deficit at the end of the Arroyo term, the administration has now simultaneously promised to (i) increase the deficit from P300 billion to P350 billion by the year-end and (ii) bring it down to P180 billion (assuming 5 percent annual GDP growth) by 2013. So are we pressing the “up” or the “down” button, gentlemen?

Last weekend brought new headlines, this time over the previous administration’s use of climate change funds donated by the French to help reduce the deficit. The newspapers labored mightily to make it all sound sinister, but the French didn’t help when they later admitted that the funds were always available anyway for deficit reduction. Squid tactics won’t work when the squid “ain’t squirtin’ da ink”.

And what about all those “midnight appointments” about which such a fuss was raised? As predicted, many of the better-known ones voluntarily departed under pressure anyway, from the Armed Forces’ Delfin Bangit to Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.’s Efraim Genuino to Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System’s Gabriel Claudio. As for the rest, we’re still waiting for evidence of irregularity. Perhaps the administration is (at last) taking all the time it should have taken in the beginning to first become familiar with the rules that govern civil service tenure [see below].

We hope that the President’s SONA next week will finally begin to shed some solid evidentiary light on the issues against which he successfully ran for the highest office. In this connection, we hear that the Palace has actually instructed the various agencies to report their respective inputs to SONA according to a bad guys/good guys format, i.e. “these are the bad things that we had to do under the old administration” versus “these are the good things that we now promise to do under the new administration”.

We think this data-gathering approach undeservedly impugns not only the previous administration, but also the integrity of the career civil servants who run our permanent government. But if, in the process, we finally end up getting some real evidence that it wasn’t all just smoke and mirrors from the erstwhile opposition, then the whole underhanded exercise may be—not quite, but almost—worth it.

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It’s always a treat to meet exemplary representatives of the younger generation—young men and women whose credentials and behavior are genuinely admirable—especially if they’re to be found in government.

One such example is lawyer Tonette Allones, the articulate young executive director of the Career Executive Service Board. It is she who looks after the health and welfare of the 5,000-odd Career Executive Service Officers (CESOs) who make up what the British would call the “mandarins” of professional government.

Tonette is a product of UP and Harvard (Kennedy School) and a TOYM awardee, someone who could have ridden the gravy train to the easy life. Instead, she is proud to say that she and her husband have obligated themselves to live modest lives and stay within their means, so that she can communicate—by example as well as instruction—the personal integrity that she seeks to instill in the civil service.

I had her as a repeat guest last Saturday on the morning radio talk show I co-host over DWBR with former teen heart-throb and now government media veteran Baby O’Brien. As usual, Tonette was a bundle of insights and inspiration.

It turns out that becoming a CESO is no laughing matter. The candidates first have to pass a written exam; this year only 25 percent of them managed to do that (including my co-host Baby). If I showed that kind of passing rate at AIM where I teach adjunct, I would probably be lynched by the students and not a few of my fellow faculty.

After the written exam, the candidates are tested in various simulations of real-life management situations (typical pass rate: 50 percent), then undergo a rigorous background check and finally an in-depth interview by the CESB heads. After the whole process, they’re also put through an immersion experience in some of the country’s poorest communities. As Tonette puts it, this is intended to remind them who it is they’re really working for as government officials in a developing country like ours.

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Lately, Tonette has been busy making the rounds of the different agencies, educating agency heads about who may or may not be terminated in the current transition between administrations, advising them about the distinctions between coterminous and non-coterminous political appointments; between actual, eligible, and on-stream CESOs; and all the other arcana of the government mandarinate.

All of this will obviously be invaluable in clearing up all those “midnight appointment” issues in a way that satisfies the competing, but equally valid, objectives of political acceptability, professional competence, and security of tenure.

Interestingly, despite her obvious idealism and love for government service, Tonette would prefer to see government operating only in areas where it is really needed, and get out of those areas where it’s not. One of her examples of the latter is, surprisingly, corrections—she believes that the private sector can do a better job of running our prisons.

Now that’s a suggestion that warms the heart of a registered Republican like me. But it’s not hard to see how it suits Tonette’s agenda as well. By limiting the presence—and the size—of government headcount, this helps her objective of improving both the quality and the pay of those who have proven they can do their jobs well.

Tonette proudly points to her own agency, CESB, as one of the few whose payroll (“personal services”) is smaller than the rest of its operating overhead (“MOOE”). It’s the jewels like this that can be found from time to time in the vast bureaucracy of the Philippine government, which encourage us to keep hoping that we as a nation can still pull it off.

gbolivar1952@gmail.com