Government Office Corruption And Inefficiency Can Be Greatly Lessed Through The Parliamentary-Federal System

It's crazy for people to think that all the Philippines needs are change in people but not in a change in system. It's almost like saying that Cambodia should have remained in the Khmer Rouge or Germany should have remained in Nazism until today. The same can be said with the Philippines' current presidential-unitary system where both systems turn out to be inefficient. The presidential system hardly has scrutiny and accountability where it prefers popularity over credibility while the unitary system is definitely not fit for huge territories. A good example of the unitary system's failure is how Imperial Manila's traffic may soon beat the traffic in China's Beijing sooner or later.


First, let's consider a basic understanding of the system of the parliament. What I didn't consider or know before was how the opposition in the parliament is built with two sides -- the Majority Backbench and the Minority Backbench in the parliament. The job of the opposition is to question the majority bloc in its quest to hold it accountable. So how can this be done? I remembered I wrote that having an Ombudsman is definitely not enough -- there's too many rats and too little cats. That's why the Ombudsman as of recent can't do its function as properly as it should. In fact, whatever failures it accumulated throughout the years is because the system restricts the competent and empowers the incompetent in every government office.

Having a shadow cabinet or minority backbench to hold them accountable with watchdogs is better than just having the office of the Ombudsman. Sweden has the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is one to represent the public. The Minority Bloc sends its watchdogs on the other side to hold each other accountable. For example, we've known for the huge corruption record that's still going on in the Bureau of Internal Revenue. But can you imagine if the BIR itself was watched over by the opposition watchdogs? It would be much easier to catch BIR officials who are asking for money under the table or not doing their job against big time tax evaders. The same can go for any government offices where scrutiny by the parliamentary is much higher than that of the presidential system.

The second would be how can federalism actually help make government offices' efficiency better. It should be stupid how forms have to be in MANILA and yes, all forms are in Imperial Manila. So it doesn't matter who the BIR head is -- efficient or inefficient -- the whole problem is with the SYSTEM itself. How can it be in the system? How can government offices operate efficiently if everyone has to be too centralized to Imperial Manila, right? 

The huge difference between federal and unitary is how they handle large territories. One of the biggest problems in China vs. Malaysia is the use of unitary vs. federal in how efficiency is done. So how does federalism work? You can think of the two-level government where there is delegation. There's the central government and sub-state government. They are not separate states. They are all unified under one Philippine government and one flag. How is that possible? Both the central government and the state government are part of the government. This is where distribution of power is more spread out -- giving more deciding powers at a regional level rather than let the national level do all the deciding powers.

So how can this help the functions of the government offices? Not having everything rely too much on Imperial Manila can allow government offices can do their jobs at a regional level at a better rate. That means unnecessary waiting time can be greatly lessened for certain government documents such as birth certificates from the National Statistics Office or approval of one's passport from the Department of Foreign Affairs. 

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So what's it going to be? Still think that it's just a matter of people and that systems don't matter?