Duterte must stop ‘beddings’ over government biddings

If the incoming Duterte administration is really serious in stopping corruption in the bureaucracy, it must seriously democratize the procurement system to allow more winning bidders, instead of the usual monopoly of a winning bidder.

“Why fix if it ain’t broke?” But indeed, why change the system, if it has worked fairly well for so long? As an old saying goes, “Why fix if it ain’t broke?” But on the contrary, it is now an open secret that even public biddings that are intended to work in government’s favor and for the common good is often rigged right from the start.

And as another saying that goes, “It takes two to tango,” it simply means that there are players from both government and the private sector that are insidious bed partners, colluding to corner and manipulate government biddings that result in corruption, losses and inefficiencies in public services.

Oftentimes, the criteria for qualified bidders are manipulated to favor a few, or that the bidders themselves collude among themselves, on who should win in a particular contract bidding. They even deliberately push for a failed bidding, until government is forced into negotiated deals favorably priced in favor of a contrived winning bidder at the expense of government.

Of course, other losing bidders secretly partake or share in varying ways the “so-to-speak loot” of the contrived winning bidder. Albeit there is collusion from the start, at least the pie is somewhat shared, but still at the expense of government and the people.

Winning price and quality? A worst scenario is the case, whereby the collusion between government and a favored bidder goes too far to the extent of modifying the criteria, thus, defying the very logic and essence of a public bidding.

Many years back, a small-time microentrepreneur innovator, an International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) awardee at that, lost a bidding for his prized shallow tube well technology, despite beating everybody as to price and quality.

His only problem is that he could not allegedly supply the required volume. Obviously, who won was a favored supplier, who charged almost thrice the price, and even bought all the stocks our IRRI awardee could produce. Can’t our government banks provide credit to winning small players against their winning bids, which serve as collaterals being almost an effective purchase orders by themselves?

“Qwerty free market.” There are other variations on how the collusion in the sharing of the proverbial economic pie is done, but whatever it is, it is still a mockery of the essence and importance of a government-bidding process.

Supposedly, there is sound logic to the argument of allowing suppliers and contractors to compete and fight it out for the best price and the best quality in government biddings. Indeed, this logic is a brand of neoliberal free market “dog eat dog” system that my friend Nonoy Oplas of Minimalist Government and columnist of Business World advocates rabidly.

We have resigned to accept this system as normal, which we can only blame on “Qwerty” logic, which takes after the standard keyboard system designed by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer from Wisconsin, who patented the first typewriter—which carried the letters Q, W, E, R, T and Y on the top left letter row of the keyboard from left to right. When Sholes sold in 1873 his patent to Remington, who made it successful, the “Qwerty” system became the standard, regardless of its inherent shortcomings.

In fact, a better keyboard, the Dvorak system invented in 1936 by Dr. August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey, was four times more efficient, but because Qwerty was ahead and people are already accustomed to it, shifting to a better system was impossible.

Change is coming? While it may be difficult to change customs and ways, the Duterte slogan “Change is coming” and his penchant for going for the jugular and the unorthodox may just do the trick. Moreover, we cannot compare being accustomed to the old Qwerty keyboard system to the way people manage things.

Although there are situations when a single winning bidder is appropriate, for small-ticket items and supplies, it may be advisable to allow say the top 5 or top 3 bidders a share in a supply contract.

This way, you democratize wealth and break the winner-takes-all system dominated by monopolies, which, in many cases in the provinces, are the same oligarchs, who control or influence the local politics, the informal lending system, trade of goods and farm inputs, and almost every major economic activity in the community.

Perhaps, as a compromise to free marketers, an institutional caveat can be set, whereby a free market for price and quality will still be put in motion in a bidding, from which the standards will be determined in favor of government.

“Do dirty” management style? A mechanism can be established on how an agreed supply contract will be divided openly. At least, there is transparency, unlike the current practice of the collusion done behind people’s backs.

Another caveat can be institutionalized, whereby apart from a preaudit upon prebidding qualification, a performance audit can be done during and after performance. Those who fail certain performance criteria will be disqualified in the succeeding years.

For inclusivity, perhaps, cooperatives and small microenterprises may be given reserved slots, provided they, too, compete fair and square on price and quality.

As the devil is in the details, as the saying goes, I guess President-elect Rodrigo R. Duterte’s success will be in the nitty-gritty of handling things. Knowing his unusual “Do Dirty” hands-on management style, he gets things done as he leads by example by immersing himself into people’s concerns by posing as a taxi driver, etc.

Being more of an executive faced with nuts and bolts problems, perhaps, it finally takes a nut like Duterte to do dirty enough to get everyone to bolt in against unholy “bedding” partners causing fiscal adultery over government biddings.

You may reach Michael Alunan at e-mail  mikealunan@yahoo.com.