Institutional cross-dressing

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

The cloudburst of public corruption scandals that have appeared in recent months in Panama is, to say the least, appalling. It’s more evidence that crimes, and the attitude and behavior that go with them, are the social scourge of corruption and its inseparable partner, impunity. This calls for a strong public reaction to contain the damage, apply corrective measures and overhaul public service.

The common good, defense of the general interest and service to fellow citizens seem to have been banished from public office. We must act in unison to restore them to public life and to truly improve our social mores. Otherwise we will find ourselves without public institutions and, frankly, without the human resources to be a society.

The lack of enthusiasm for the study of the public sector that has existed in our society and in academia in our country affects every part of our fragile social structure every day. This fact was aggravated from the moment that we took the international responsibility of the administration, operation, conservation, maintenance and modernization of the Panama Canal. We soon lost sight that all is for naught if we have a canal without having a functional country and society.

It is worth recallning here that the concept of the state and its main instrument, the public administration, has a transverse character that overflows the bounds of any single scientific discipline and proves to be a meeting place for political science, law, economics, management theory and sociology.

The transmutation of the “political” and “official” roles has generated an institutional cross-dressing understood as the confusion of roles between politicians and functionaries. In other words, we have politicians who in practice occupy themselves with the roles and skills of civil servants, and civil servants whose practice and comptence is more of a political character. In Panama, this absurd role reversal has no name, but it’s deadly.