Mabini Hall - Access to Justice

Don’t look now but if you do, that figure is the monthly salary of the President of the Republic of the Philippines—before tax. To most of our countrymen, that is a huge amount that can go a long way to feed a family of five on more than a staple of NFA rice and the occasional Jollibee cheeseburger. It may even be a decent budget for a middle class family living in a subdivision in Q.C. with two family cars on amortization. But for the Chief Executive of the twelfth largest nation in the world in terms of population, P63,525 or $1,400 is a joke.

The first objection is that surely, the President may earn the equivalent of the pay of yuppie a few years out of college or the combined take-home money of four chain-smoking call center agents, but it is topped off by allowances and discretionary funds and the privileges of office. So why bother increasing the pay? There lies the error.

In many developed countries worldwide, the salary of the highest official of the land is at least at par with those heading big private corporations. The key is to raise executive pay in government to a decent level and cut down the extras. If the top-level pay is P63,525, can you imagine how much dedicated government officials make down the line?

In Singapore, the model is to average the highest pay checks of the top three biggest companies and make that the benchmark for the prime minister’s pay. After all, isn’t the chief executive responsible for the national budget a trillion more than corporate budgets and in charge of an army of bureaucrats a thousand times over the whole line of assembly workers in a manufacturing plant?

The second objection is that any pay increase for the President is better given to the host of underpaid and overworked soldier, policeman, teacher or clerk. This is a populist argument that serves no purpose. Even if you double the salary from P63,525 to P127,050, the difference of P63,525 divided by a million workers is pffft. The same math holds even if you increase the P63,525 ten times.

In any event, the Constitution requires that any increase in salary should not benefit the incumbents. Only those who come after them are entitled. It is a sound policy to avoid self-dealing.

And so the idea of good people in government continues to be a challenge. The good people are out there doing brand management and investment banking and making tons of money for themselves and in their calculation, for the economy and society at large. The bad ones are left to rot in government and the government rots with them.

Perhaps there are really good (or rich) public servants who chose the life of poverty in the name of public good? The chances of this are slimmer than winning the Professional Poker Tour championship. And if they exist, they either end up being sinners themselves or get dragged down by the crabs. Worse yet, they leave public service frustrated and defeated and abandon the business of government to the dark side.

My dear friend in government says that it is a good thing that government pay is so low—it makes the job a vocation and not an enterprise. Again, do we want to take this kind of chance thinking and attitude on governance?

What you can do if you can’t join government and make the sacrifice for measly pay is to advocate for the passage of the Government Compensation and Classification Act now pending in Congress. Well-studied and well-crafted, it is the one big hope to reform the bureaucracy in this country.

Or you can take a step back and enjoy your stay in this land with the satisfaction of knowing that you are making as much as the President, if not more, without the intrigues, the politics, the disasters, the bloodshed, the tons of paperwork and the whole package that comes with the office. Now, what’s P63,525?