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DPMF Publications: |
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Civil
Service Reform and Administrative Incapacity in Equatorial Guinea |
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Introduction
Since the mid-1970s governments
of developing countries have been under pressure to reform their economies.
Sub-Saharan African countries have in fact in the 'front-line' in terms of
carrying out economic stabilization reforms. Factors that put pressure on
governments to embark on reform programs were mostly economic in character. In
sub-Saharan Africa, however, other factors included, chronic budget deficits, a
fall in the value of goods and services, persistent balance of payments
deficits, and increasing recourse to external borrowing as a source of revenue
for the government. Because of these economic ills and international pressures
to balance the domestic budgets, most African governments were called to
sharply cut back on public sector expenditure, including their rapidly
expanding civil service bureaucracies. It is against this background that the
adoption, by practically all African Countries, of structural adjustment
programs (SAPs) under the sponsorship of the Bretton Wood Institutions (the
International Monetary Fund -IMF- and the World Bank) came about.
Indeed, the contribution of public sector institutions in promoting sustainable development is becoming increasingly appreciated all over the world. Hence, Reform initiatives aimed at overhauling developing countries™ economies have emphasized the need for adequate public sector administrative capacity, especially within core civil service departments and agencies.
Civil Service Reform in Equatorial Guinea: A Concise Overview
In Equatorial Guinea, right from the launch of the country's first structural adjustment program in 1982, it was noted that the public service was heavily overstaffed and disproportionately large vis-à-vis the country's economic resource base .The major consequence of an overstaffed civil service was that real wages were very low; therefore, employees could hardly give their best.
Various administrative and public service reform efforts aimed at improving government efficiency in service delivery have been undertaken in Equatorial Guinea since independence. However, these reforms failed because of inappropriate diagnosis of the root problems confronting the civil service. Thus, not only has the content of the reforms been problematic, but also the strategies deployed in introducing and implementing them. These reforms have tended to be dominated by the bureaucratic/administrative elite acting in collusion with technocratic advisors supplied by the World Bank/IMF coalition and thus, often excluding the key stakeholders, the bulk of middle and lower echelon civil servants themselves.
The limited input of local personnel into the design of administrative reform programs has therefore been a major factor in terms of hampering their successful implementation. In order to attain a better understanding of the reform efforts in Equatorial Guinea, two historical periods need to be distinguished. These are the First Republic (1968-1979) and the Second Republic (1979 to date). This latter period is commonly known as 'Una Guinea Mejor' or 'A Better Guinea`.
Civil Service Reform During the First Republic
Very little, if any, is written about what happened during the first 11 years of independence. This is particularly true about the public service in general and the civil service in particular regarding its size, recruitment procedures and management. However, this period was a turning point in the evolution of the country's administrative system. In the first instance, there was a rather turbulent transition shift from the colonial style of administration to a nationalist style of government. Secondly, from 1973 the government strengthened its ties with the ex-Soviet bloc countries, thereby adopting a command/central planning system of Public Administration. Hence, a phenomenally rapid expansion of the civil service bureaucracy took place during the reign of President Francisco Macias Nguema (1973-1979). This bureaucratic proliferation was accompanied by extensive nationalization measures which resulted in a large and unwieldy Parastatal sector.
As the experience of other parts of Africa has demonstrated, the growth of the civil service bureaucracy within the first 5 to 10 years of independence was inevitable. This was because the new government was obliged to fill the gap of the departing colonial rulers. The government was additionally expected to fulfill the high expectations of its citizens' expectations for improved basic needs satisfaction and job opportunities.
It was against this background that the Government of the First Republic adopted a full employment policy, that is one intended to employ all able-bodied persons in the country. This situation, by and large, led to the swelling up of the public service to a point, which made rational public service management unsustainable. Although there are no precise statistics on the number of civil servants during the First Republic, the astronomical rise in total costs, as reflected by the total salary bill, gives an indication of the magnitude. Another indicator is the percentage of government current expenditure allocated to public service employment. Labor costs as a percentage of total expenditure were quite high, ranging from a high of over 67 per cent in 1979 to a low of 13 per cent in 1999.
Since the government had to spend high proportions of the national budget on civil service wages, its capacity, to pay for appropriate non-wage operating supplies and to invest in the development of the civil service infrastructure was seriously constrained. This situation seriously
eroded the performance of the civil service both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency as it failed to procure the necessary tools, equipment, materials and strong institutions for effective policy formulation and implementation.
During the First Republic, unlike in industry, where results or outputs were key factors monitored on a daily basis, civil service performance was not accorded a similar degree of importance. This was because the government during this era, did not recognize the urgent necessity to improve the qualitative performance of the public service in terms of service delivery. Indeed, the activities of the public service became less and less focused as ministries and government agencies in general and parastatals in particular had no definite missions, objectives, strategies and output indicators against which to measure individual and organizational performance. It was simply enough for Public Service Managers to ‚muddle through' by singing songs of praise to the political leadership to cover up for their shoddy performance.
Politically motivated appointments of officers to strategic management positions remained a major hindrance with respect to improving performance, as there was no correlation between the individual being appointed and his ability to perform. Appointments of most personnel managers in the civil service were not always made in order to facilitate the effective delivery of essential services. In fact, most senior civil servants lacked training and expertise in the highly important spheres of executive leadership, human resource management, policy analysis and management. The overwhelming majority of these appointees attained their positions on account of their well-honed political instincts rather than professional competencies (The Merit Principle).
The politicization of the Public Service further diluted any residual elements of professional integrity in the bureaucracy.
The absurdity of politicizing the public service was characterized by the introduction of a parallel 'Commissar System' at all echelons of the governmental bureaucracy. Under this system, which was intended to entrench the supremacy of the ruling single party, government departments had two officers at the same level: one with technical responsibilities and the other one, a Political Commissar, would be charged with political (party) responsibilities. Both these officers were on full pay and enjoyed the same conditions of service. This Commissar System was characterized by shoddy service delivery, poor morale among career bureaucrats and a precipitous decline in socio-economic conditions to the detriment of both the human and physical infrastructure in the Public Service.
The imprudent management of available resources in the Public Service, led to constrained institutional capacity to perform to expected standards. Adding to the disruption of proper personnel management systems were politically instigated changes in policies and practices of recruitment, retrenchments and remuneration in the Public Service.
This blatant mismanagement of the public service continued to have a devastatingly costly effect on the growth of the economy. For instance, at the end of 1967 the GNP was estimated at US$170, by 1975 it had nose-dived to US$70. Real income in the public sector and employment opportunities in the private sector also plummeted steeply, while private enterprises were run down and became largely moribund. Production of major cash crops dropped to scandalously alarming proportions. Cocoa production, for instance, rocketed downwards from 34,000 metric tons in 1968 to 8,000 metric tons in 1976. Coffee production similarly fell below 5,000 metric tons from 8,500 metric tons over the same period (UNDP, 1988a). In 1979 it had become obvious that the national economy and the entire framework of public administration had practically reached breaking point. Through an institutionalized pattern of ‚bad and unresponsive
Governance, the country had indeed been driven to an unavoidable turning point. Change at the level of political governance was therefore all but inevitable. It was within the context of these extreme political and economic circumstances that the change of government which occurred on the 3 rd of August 1979, took place.
Civil Service Reforms Undertaken in the Era of 'Una
Guinea Mejor' or 'A Better Guinea'
The new government of the Supreme Military Council,(SMC) led by Major Teodro Obiang Nguema, found that the political, economic and administrative infrastructure of the country had been completely destroyed. The public sector was in disarray, the civil service bloated and the workforce totally lacking in motivation, commitment, and discipline (Ocha'a, 1985). The administrative system, particularly in the civil service, was riddled with a plethora of institutional deficiencies and the widespread vice of bureaucratic corruption. It was not only inefficient, but totally unresponsive to the needs and aspirations of the Guinean Public. The new government, therefore faced the unenviable task of reconstituting and revitalizing the machinery of Public Administration in an economy that had to all intents and purposes collapsed. Hence, on assumption of power, the new government, had to contend with a number of urgent tasks. These tasks can be summed up as follows: setting up of a transitional administrative machinery, purging the bureaucracy of elements considered to be loyal to the ousted government and giving
the machinery of political governance in the country a 'New Look' image, order to attract the confidence of the international community.
The political, economic and administrative reforms undertaken by the new government inevitably required a totally new philosophical orientation on the part of the public service if it was to loyally implement the new government's policies and programs. It was in the aftermath of the change of government, that the need to seriously reassess existing public service laws, procedures and policies, was recognized. It was soon ascertained that the rules and regulations governing the inherited civil service were outdated and archaic. Experience in the planned execution of activities was pathetically limited. The Managerial cadre of the civil service was not capable of coherently and effectively implementing, monitoring, as well as controlling the planned activities and interventions. Clearly defined management systems and procedures in the management of personnel, finance and/or property were conspicuously absent while overall managerial know-how was inadequate and weaknesses in human resource planning and utilization were rampant.
The new government's political commitment to build a democratic system based on a decentralized format of Public Administration, complemented by an economic policy that envisaged a gradually diminishing role for the State in running the national economy, necessitated a sober and thorough reassessment in respect of determining an appropriate role for the civil service in the new dispensation. To this end, two major initiatives to reform the public sector were undertaken during the reign of President Obiang Nguema. The initiatives comprised
Decree-Law no. 2/1980, promulgated on the 3rd of March, 1980 regarding the
administrative/territorial reorganization of the country and the Central
Government Act of the 12th
of March 1980,which sought to reduce the size of the civil service as well as improving its performance and effectiveness.
The first law reconfigured the country into 2 regions, 7 provinces and 18 districts. This new structure was both necessary and well intended to improve the government's capacity to set goals, plan and monitor progress effectively as well as reducing bureaucratic red tape and inertia, which had attained an alarming degree of notoriety. It was also recognized that the public administration was in urgent need of rejuvenation and that it should be brought closer to the people if essential services were to be efficiently and effectively provided at the grassroots level. This measure was also intended to de-mystify the bureaucracy and thus restore public confidence in government on the part of the ordinary people.
While this law improved the framework for an effective administrative system, the supply response was not in line with the scope of reforms. Thus, contrary to expectations, this structure of governance did not shift the locus of power from the center to the regions nor did the regions
experience any meaningful devolution of administrative power from the Capital City, Malabo. Despite high sounding rhetorical declarations, the regions were not granted any specific administrative authority to manage their own affairs in any significant aspect of governance, either on concurrent or residual power sharing basis.
In deciding on the new administrative structure, political leaders and senior career officials did not seriously tackle the more challenging task of linking the new structure with the deployment of appropriate human, financial and material resources. The introduction of the new structure was not only expected to stipulate provisions governing new civil service bodies, but establish a harmony between planning, programming and budgeting. However, this would not be the case. The result of this act of omission and lacking in coordination has been an inexorably expanding top-heavy management structure with a diminishing productive capacity.
The government of the SMC had, however, its own vision of reforming the public service. The first dimension of this vision was to create a professional civil service, in other words, a civil service that was geared to provide an enabling environment for increased participation by the private sector and individuals in economic and social development. This dimension was characterized by the government as a 'Gobierno Tecnocrata' or Technocratic Government. The second aspect was to give central governmental institutions the responsibility for coordinating different facets of public administration amidst a drive to accelerate administrative decentralization. The third aspect of this ‚technocratic vision™, was to provide direction as well as carrying out implementation of the decentralization of appropriate government functions and operations away from central ministries to the administrative periphery or local governments (provinces and districts) in a more efficient and effective manner. This noble intention notwithstanding, weak public institutions and the lack of a civil service capable of managing development policies continued to be cited as the causes of low economic and administrative development in the country (Ocha'a, 1985).
The second law, the Central Government Act of 12 March 1980, introduced a new structure for central government institutions and gave them new staffing plans (Consejo Militar Supremo, 1980). This law was mainly aimed at rationalizing the bureaucracy. Put bluntly, its main thrust intended to remove 'excess bureaucratic fat' by removing redundant employees, rather than strengthening the capacity of the civil service to drive the management of national development programs. Article 4 of the Act, for instance, drew down the number of government ministries to 11 from 13 and reduced the number of civil servants from 4,000 to 3,000. This reduction was effected by Decree-Law of 22 April 1980 (Liniger-Goumaz, 1993). The exercise of downsizing the number of civil servants was simplistically undertaken by way of blindly making across-the-board cuts. The requirement of planning the process through a strategic analysis of critical skills was inexplicably ignored. Reduction percentages were imposed upon ministries in order to attain the expected reduction level without due regard to the numbers and quality of the civil servants on the ground. In addition, a freeze was slapped on salary raises, as the only preoccupation was with keeping costs down with an almost evangelizing zeal. Although the ultimate social impact of the retrenchment exercise was not as severe as what had been expected, it produced, in the final analysis, a government paradoxically ill-configured and ill-equipped to perform its functions in a more cost-efficient manner. In other words, the entire exercise backfired and further destabilized an already demoralized civil service.
These weaknesses, coupled with the challenges posed by the redefined role of the state by the government of the CMS, called for a more serious reform approach. This approach indicated that the government should retain the responsibility for ensuring that public services were provided without actually providing them directly itself. In this scheme of things, certain functions currently provided by government such as water or electricity supplies are to be hived off to the private sector to ensure more effective service delivery. Evaluation of the impact of this policy shift, which is still in its embryonic stage will have to be carried out at a later stage
Conclusion
The example of Equatorial Guinea shows that the 'incremental or muddling through' approach to administrative/civil service reform may not deliver the desirable results. In fact, this piecemeal and rather disjointed approach might actually have the effect of generating contrary outcomes which can call into question the very 'Raison d' être' of the Reform exercise itself. The evidence irrefutably demonstrates that the almost religious obsession with staff sacking/ retrenchments to cut budget costs resulted in many cases, in an absurdly unbalanced personnel structure. More importantly, in cases where experienced staff had taken advantage of generous severance packages and left government employment, civil service performance suffered deeper erosions since the remaining staff were inadequately trained and prepared for technical/ management positions. Implementation of the reform programs has been rather slow and neither led to a more
efficient bureaucracy nor a more effective service delivery. Thus, against a general background of skepticism, civil servants at all levels have tended to safeguard their accumulated rights and entitlements rather than their professional commitment to the cause of change and efficiency. Needless to point out that if the Public Administration of any country fails to satisfactorily and transparently deliver essential public services, calls for far reaching reforms at the level of national political governance tend to find much appeal among the majority of citizens.
References
Leniger-Gumaz, Mo, (1993). Who's Who de la Guinea Equatorial. (Geneva: Les Editions du Temps)
Ocha'a, M. B. C. (1985), 'Guinea Equatorial, polemica y realidad' Equatorial Guinea polemic and reality. (Madrid: Editions Guinea).
UNDP. (1988). Second Round Table of Donors for Economic and Social Development of Equatorial Guinea, UNDP-RGE.