opinion

Hmmmm --- a domestic worker as minister of justice?

Well, here in Panama we have a president who was a shift manager at McDonald’s, so people in this country really have no cause to be that critical of Evo Morales’s unusual cabinet appointments.

Martín Torrijos’s great strength --- and great weakness --- is that when he took office he had a team of people who had served in government before. Some of them had performed honorably in disgraceful administrations, and some came with questionable personal baggage. To this observer, however, the best and worst people in the Torrijos administration so far seem to be those with the least experience in high-level public offices.

It’s different with Evo Morales, and could not be otherwise. His was a democratic revolution of conquered, oppressed and excluded people against the descendants of the conquerors. That domestic worker, Casimira Rodríguez, was more than just a maid --- she was a leader of a domestic workers’ union. To the arrogant caste that Morales and the Bolivian electorate sent packing, however, she’ll surely be denigrated as just the menial help become pretentious. Those who were raised to consider themselves her genetic superiors will expect her to fail.

The new Bolivian cabinet is full of people coming into responsible government posts for the first time because the voters specifically wanted to throw the usual cast of characters who had held high positions out of their country’s public life, and with good reason in a great many cases.

Still, this means that the man in the alpaca sweater has an untested team, a serious problem that has often been seen in other times and places. Some of the new people will be unequal to the challenge, and some will be competent individuals placed in the wrong jobs. It’s inevitable.

In my years in Michigan I saw an analogous situation and how it should not be handled. When Coleman Young was elected mayor of Detroit, the voters overthrew a white power structure that had hung on as the city became predominantly black. He had a number of whites on his team, but they were generally not whites who held responsible positions in the old municipal administration. Some of his people, black and white, had been tested in positions at other levels of government. To bring about the change in direction for which Detroiters had voted, Young had to bring in a lot of people for whom public service was new.

A number of these turned out to be crooks, or incompetent, or insufferably arrogant in their dealings with the people of Detroit. Not all, and not even most, but enough of his choices were bad to cause him problems. And of course, the people whom he had defeated, and a lot of whites outside of Detroit who were hostile for racial or ideological reasons, wanted to see Coleman Young fail.

The voters in Detroit re-elected Young time and again, and at times his city administration enjoyed important support from Democratic governors and presidents. But his legacy was diminished by a string of scandals involving his appointees and a lot of it was his fault for never shuffling his administration during all of those years.

After a re-election it’s always a good practice for an elected public executive to ask for the resignations of all of his or her appointees, then reappoint some to their posts, shift others around to new jobs and thank the rest and send them on their respective ways. Coleman Young never did that, and Detroit suffered because of it.

When an entirely new group comes to government, such as Evo Morales’s cabinet, it’s usually best not to wait for elections and a change of administration to make changes. A year or two into his term of office --- assuming he lasts that long, which is a big assumption given Bolivia’s history --- Morales ought to do a sober evaluation of his cabinet’s performance and make changes in posts where they are needed.

Call it a purge, call it a shuffle, call it what you will, the social movement that has come to power behind Morales will need this sort of thing from time to time in order to prosper. Feelings, friendships and personal loyalties will have to yield to the public interest.

I trust that, just as the Andean civilizations had some remarkable public administrators before the Spanish conquest --- it shows in some of the magnificent pre-Columbian public works that still exist today --- Bolivia’s new indigenous-led government will produce some very talented public servants. However, the law of averages says that there will also be failures and Evo Morales would do well to adjust for that.