Mukti Rijal

The presidents and prime ministers do express their discontent, frustration and resentment against bureaucrats and public servants. Politicians are alleged to take resorts to this umbrage in two situations. Oftentimes, they tend to execute these clever tactics to hide and cover up their weaknesses and a barrage of failures attributed to them. While taking cover of this camouflage, they are accustomed to taking recourse to shift and pass the blame on to the civil servants for their poor performance and results.

It seems politicians’ bashing of bureaucracy has been the rule rather than an exception in varying contexts and jurisdictions. Bureaucrats and administrators are soft targets for political executives and ministers. For politicians and ministers, this is also considered an easy and risk-free recourse.
Blaming and slighting public bureaucrats generally provokes no rage or reaction to counter and rebuff ministers and politicians in return. In the scheme of democratic politics, they are wont to take politicians’ rebuke in their strides and absorb the shocks.

Subordinates
Many countries including Nepal have adopted and practised democratic polity. Civil servants are subordinate to politicians and they are expected to be pliant, compatible and non-resistant to the political executives and ministers. Furthermore, bureaucracy is oftentimes tamed, demoralised and humbled at the hands of ministers and political masters. The bureaucracy is accused and touted as the craven cause of government failure and deficiencies.

Not only in the countries such as Nepal, in the developed democracies like the United States too, as accounted for by political science researchers and scholars, politicians routinely hide their weaknesses and tend to run against the bureaucracy in their ceaseless grubbing of votes from the electorates.

Once elected to office, politicians are measurably and radically more contemptuous of public administrators and civil servants. According to study findings, presidents, while making public statements on the floor of the US Congress, call public administrators and bureaucrats 70 per cent of the time and 84 per cent of these references are pejorative and derogatory.

Several references can be brought forth, underlined and raked up interestingly to indicate the frustration and discontent of the US presidents on the allegedly lukewarm response and sluggishness of bureaucracy.
The famed US President Harry Truman is reported to have remarked, “ I thought I was the president but when it comes to these bureaucrats, I cannot do damn things which are anticipated of my post and responsibility.”
Richard Nixon is quoted to have vented his ire against bureaucracy. He is on record to have remarked, “ We have no discipline in this bureaucracy. We never fire any bureaucrats. We never reprimand anybody. We never demote anybody”.

Likewise, Jimmy Carter in the final years of his presidency commented on the bureaucracy saying, “Before I became president, I was warned that dealing with federal bureaucracy would be one of the worst problems I would have to face. It has been worse than I had anticipated.”

Nicholas Henry in his widely read and appreciated popular text Public Administration and Public Affairs (eleventh edition, 2009) adduces the reason why the US presidents are not happy with bureaucrats and express their rage against public administrators.
President John F. Kennedy was questioned and pestered by his brother attorney general Robert Kennedy over the fact that during his daily commute, he could see a large signpost directing drivers to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) headquarters, which, in his view, should not be advertised because of the state sensitivity and security interests.

President Kennedy ordered an aide to have the signboard removed. The aide, in turn, directed the Interior Department to remove it. Nothing happened. A few days later, the president repeated his order. Again nothing happened. Aghast at aggravated by both the bureaucracy’s resistance and his brother’s badgering, the president personally called the official in charge of the signboard, “ This is Jack Kennedy. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning. I want that signboard down by the time, the attorney general goes home tonight, and I am holding you personally responsible in case you fail to carry it out. The signboard was finally removed and the president had learned a lesson. He then reacted, “ I now understand that for a president to get something done in this country, he has got to say three times. The US president George Bush is also reported to have got infuriated with the public administrators and civil servants and alleged that a resistant bureaucracy was the main reason why Bush’s grand project was derailed.

According to the incidents referred above, the public administrators resisted carrying out the pet democracy promotion project of President George Bush, saying, “Policy is not what the president says and articulates in his speeches. Policy is what emerges from the interagency coordination and series of consultation with stakeholders”.

Though these contexts have entirely belonged to the US, Nepalese prime ministers and ministers have not been all happy with the bureaucracy if their utterances and complaints are vetted and carefully nuanced and examined.

Lacking Trust
Right from the days of the democratic change of 1990, prime ministers and ministers had not been very much sure of the reliability, relevance, commitment and trustworthiness of the bureaucracy that was schooled, orientated and trained during the party-less Panchayat polity.

The first post-democracy era prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala who took the reins of the prime minister in 1 991 seemed not reposing any trust in the bureaucracy suspecting that bureaucratic machinery inherited from the past authoritarian polity would not lend any cooperation and support to his democratically elected government.
Premier Koirala had constituted the administrative restructuring commission with an intent to reshape, reorganise and recast bureaucratic architecture. During his rule, top-level bureaucrats had been sacked. A prolonged strike called by civil servants backed by the main opposition CPN( UML) had paralysed the state machinery.

Likewise, Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, the Maoist supremo, who had masterminded the strategy of the armed revolt against the state, had been prime minister at least twice during the recent past. He looked down upon the civil servants and had been reported to have remarked that the country’s civil bureaucracy was fully dysfunctional and irresponsive. The former Prime Minister Babu Ram Bhattarai had been bitterly critical of the bureaucracy and has been expressively and categorically in favour of total reorganisation of its structural and structural setup.

In an interview with the English daily “The Himalayan Times “ a few months ago, he is on record to have observed, “ Bureaucracy is just a means to implement the government’s plans and programmes. It is up to the ruling party members in the government to make bureaucracy work. However, I must agree that Nepal’s bureaucracy is outdated and irresponsible. The hierarchical setup is not going to deliver results to meet the challenges of the 21 century. So, Nepal’s bureaucracy needs an overhauling and the government should take the initiative to do this”.

Likewise, former Prime minister Madhav Nepal was reported to be harshly critical of civil servants and public administrators and used to pass the blame on them for his inability to deliver results. The politicians have been thus distrustful and critical of the bureaucracy. They are found handpicking their favourites selectively among those manning the higher echelon of the state bureaucracy. As the Nepalese bureaucracy is polarised along the partisan lines, prime ministers and ministers tend to choose those who are more or less their trusted aides from the political considerations among others.

In such a context, public servants and politicians are inclined to build a collusive nexus and indulge in corrupt and unscrupulous activities. Such actions include obtaining pecuniary advantage illegally, fraudulent misappropriation of public property, possessing financial resources or property disproportionate to one’s known sources of income and misuse or abuse of official position for serving one’s vested interests. The different ministries and strategic service delivery points are reduced into the gold mines for making money through this unholy nexus. A research report mentions that out of total cost sanctioned for a project, roughly about 30 per cent of the total estimates is invested in the work, the other 30 per cent on contractor’s profit, and 40 per cent goes into various ministers’ and officers’ pockets. The power enjoyed by ministers, bureaucrats and law enforcement agencies is so wide that they can accuse, arrest, and harass even an honest person especially to serve their interests.

Integrity, Honesty
However, civil bureaucracy alone should not be faulted for the failure of the politicians and ministers to perform and deliver results. A political leader and minister should have an average level of integrity and honesty. Moreover, he should have concrete plans and programmes at hand about what to do. In addition to it, he should have the knack to select the right mix of administrators and technical human resources to support him who can assist to deliver the results. US president Ronal Reagan was admired for his clear vision and knack to shortlist and appoint the right personnel to support him in accomplishing his plans.

In Nepal, during the Panchayat era, Surya Bahadur Thapa was admired for his skills in commanding respect and support of the civil bureaucracy. Similarly, Dr Babu Ram Bhattarai who handled the responsibility of the country’s prime minister during the federal democratic transition is widely known and appreciated for his successful tackling of the issues and commanding the trust of bureaucracy in delivering his projects.
He was able to mobilize and raise the volume of revenue resources when he was the finance minister of the country. Later as prime minister, he had successfully implemented the Kathmandu Valley’s road-widening project which would not have been possible without the support of the national civil bureaucracy and top-notch public officials.

(The author is presently associated with Policy Research Institute (PRI) as a senior research fellow. rijalmukti@gmail.com)