Reading Memo on Understanding and Analyzing Administrative System

The article that will be analyzed is by Ma. Concepcion Alfiler titled “The Philippine
Administrative System (PAS) as an Enabling Institution: A Framework and a Teaching
Methodology” mainly argued the PAS in both an academic discipline and a profession. This
reading memo will try to prove the PAS as an empowered institution through the models,
structure, and sources of power of PAS as provided by Alfiler. This could help to grasp a
deeper understanding of the PAS and its concomitant practice as applied in the local settings.
In this article, Alfiler argued that Bureaucracy can be inaccessible to its people due to
rigid organizational structures, routine procedures, too much loyalty of personnel to the
organization, misalign resource allocation, and problems of accessibility. This is very much
true. But, as the government engaged with its roles and functions, policies had been changed
overtimes. The State is bound by laws written in the Constitution. In the case of the
Philippines, the Local Government Code of 1991 is a game-changer. It empowers the local
government units to govern their respective jurisdictions with principles to underlie in the
Constitution. This proves that the PAS is far from being of a traditional approach to
administration. Time engaged with PAS to become better and better.
According to Alfiler, Philippine Administrative System is a public organization
comprising of its three branches and all offices and instrumentalities including how they
should respond to the Filipino people and their distinctive functions for the development of
socio-politics and economic environment. This illustrates that the government should always
be accompanied by good governance. The PAS is an enabled institution because it
implements responsiveness, justice, fairness, equity services while being a more effective and
efficient network organization. But, to what extent that Filipino people can tell that their
government responds to what the PAS has been set?
The author showed the framework of the so-called “must government system” in the
country. If we will try to figure out such a framework, our society can be a perfect place to
live in.
Given all of these, I want to share some of my insights based on my personal
experience. I spent eight years working at our Provincial Jail here in my province. As a
record officer, I became familiar with cases of the inmates, who are now called Persons
Deprived in Liberty (PDL), and even with their personal life. Most of the time I acted as the
secretary of the Warden. I remembered one of my important duties at that time was to know
their family background and how those PDLs found their selves into the bars. I heard many
stories coming from them. Poverty, addiction, influence from peers, pressure from their own
family, and many others. Some of them were living testimony of social injustice and their
stories remained untold. That time, each PDL had Php 40.00 food meals per day including
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or an allotment of P13.33 per meal. This is our law, and such
law also provides that every person is innocent until proven guilty. It is a pity and made me
think that working at a penitentiary can share a different dimension as a civil servant.
When President Rodrigo R. Duterte launched his war campaign against drugs, the
numbers of our PDLs have reached a maximum level in terms of figures. Most of them were
victims of what they called the police quota, “suksok’, ‘palit-ulo’, among others. But, on
other hand, they felt blessed behind the bars because they were not one of the killings in the
drug war. Most of them were just users, some were small-time pushers but they were charged
with Secs. 5 & 11 of RA 9165. Being wrongfully charged even they committed a mistake was
a definite example of not having fairness and justice in society. But where are the big-time
distributors and manufacturers of those illegal drugs? They made themselves richer and still
free. The State must protect its citizen from being abused in any form. And for those who
were killed in the drug war, they don’t deserve to be killed because there must be due
process. As I continued to explore my learning journey in public administration, I learned that
legitimacy boils down to a moral foundation and there was not or there will be no morality in
killings.

The Philippine Administrative System encompasses the menu of the great potential
that could trigger a much bigger process of transformation of the country. If properly
implemented, the government could provide democratic spaces to all the Filipino people
which emphasizing the sustainability and effectiveness of the public policies. The
recommendation of the author must be considered that all our public leaders must adopt
learnings and reforms that could stress the participation of all stakeholders. Why there should
be reforms? Because there is no constant in this world except change. Managing the public
sector in today’s environment has become a demanding challenge for public servants
especially we are in developing countries where the economies are always in transition.
I want to end this reading with some questions: 1. Is federalism, as pushed by
President Duterte, be beneficial to the government and Filipino people? 2. As a government
employee, how can we be a catalyst of change? 3. How we will evaluate candidates in
National Election 2022?