ROCKINGHAM, North Carolina—Does the Philippine government need something like a US type-Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to oversee and assess all expenditures/spending among departments, commissions and inter-related offices in its enormous bureaucracy? To be blunt, would it even be effective if given such a sweeping mandate by the incumbent president?
Offhand, I can say that if the annual evaluation/findings of the Commission on Audit (COA) on every local government, departments and offices are insufficient to assess and effect changes in the way said local governments, departments and agencies spend Filipino taxpayers’ money supposedly in service of the public, then I have some serious doubts on whether a DOGE-like mechanism can do a much better job.
I raise this issue in light of the flood of news stories surrounding the DOGE and its celebrity chief, Elon Musk—the world’s richest man and arguably the single most influential tech innovator of recent times. Musk and his staff made some inroads which resulted in some key policy decisions by US President Donald Trump, not the least of which is the (temporary I heard) closure of the US Agency For International Development or USAID.
While US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly and I mean repeatedly emphasized that humanitarian aid and other deemed essential services will be issued waivers exempting it from the funding freeze that the Trump administration had implemented, the message is not only being lost but dangerously twisted by the leftstream media which had drawn a grossly distorted picture of hundreds, if not thousands of lives being displaced and upended by the USAID suspension.
Believe you me, if the US leftstream media—especifically the liberal left-leaning talking heads—managed to collectively deny and even deflect in front of the world the persistent serious questions on former president Joe Biden’s mental and physical health for the presidency, let alone his fitness for office, for all four years of his term, then their credibility in reporting on other issues involving the Trump administration is already suspect and tainted with political bias.
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But I digress. The DOGE expose on the USAID aid allocation in various countries around the world including the Philippines bore some very disturbing revelations—-not least of which is the funding of an aggressive Democrats driven promotion of so-called ‘diversity equality and inclusivity’ or DEI which had been much abused to benefit those meeting a narrowed down criteria based principally on skin color, ethnicity, gender and/or gender preference rather than individual merit.
Hence we see examples like the plane crash which Trump blamed on DEI since airports are understaffed because they are forced to overlook an applicant’s qualifications in favor of meeting DEI quotas on the hiring process i.e, the applicants should be ethnically, racially and gender diverse—preferably minorities/female and belonging to the LGBTQIA community ad nauseaum.
The Los Angeles City Fire Department for one had, according to their website, one of the most diverse staff and personnel in the US but DEI didn’t exactly enable them to solve the perennial forest fires that plague their counties like this year’s fires that destroyed hundreds of homes of ordinary Los Angelenos, including Hollywood celebrities. And yet this DEI and other so-called ‘progressive’ programs are being funded and promoted by USAID in other parts of the world.
What about the other questionable funding programs by the USAID? Like the US $50 million to buy condoms for residents of Gaza? Or a whopping $20 million to fund a Sesame Street type TV program to push for DEI in Iraq—never mind if Western values of equality and freedom are largely ignored owing to its religious conservatism? Or how about a nearly untraceable line item allocating $4.7 trillion in payments to exactly God knows what and where.
And these programs are what the Democrats are loudly lashing out against in public? Still too early to tell but if the DOGE continues to do its job despite the legal challenges—and Attorney General Pam Bondi is said to cover the bases in cases that may be filed in the courts—it would result in a massive overhaul of the bureaucracy that would largely be credited not only to Musk but to Trump. That possibility is what’s driving the Democrats and their cohorts crazy.
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So to repeat the question? Can the Philippine national government create something similar to DOGE that would effect meaningful and enduring reforms in its bureaucracy and its local governments? And again I say that is like shooting for the stars and the moon. But even with COA alone, millions if not billions of pesos are being wasted ot worse channeled to the pockets of corrupt elective and appointed public officials.
How to explain the unaccounted medicines and other medical paraphernalia lost during the previous COVID-19 pandemic? Oh and of course the infrastructure projects that are poorly built or were not needed in the first place like the bridges that lead to nowhere, the basketball courts in barangays where no one plays basketball or the waiting sheds that can accommodate only two people.
In Cagayan de Oro City, a citizens group called Lihok Katawhan questioned the millions of pesos allocated by the incumbent administration for garbage collection that have so far failed to clean up the city’s roads and barangays. Yet the incumbent administration also didn’t find it difficult to allocate funds for mass weddings or even to pay for its army of consultants most of whose qualifications are limited to political bootlicking and muckraking.
Still if it would help, why not create a DOGE like agency in the national government? Why not indeed if only to effect some positive changes, ANY positive changes in how this ship of state called the Philippines is being run? If this DOGE-like agency can help cut down on wasteful government spending like funding mass weddings or projects that end up unfinished and rotting in obscurity, then why not even if any prospects of success are fanciful (suntok sa buwan in Filipino) at best?
