The rank and file

Presidents come and go.

The government will still be there and it will be moving on the basis of work done mostly by people going by a somewhat in-distinguishing term — the rank and file. They are the core and continuity of government even in the worst of times. Through upheavals like the declaration of martial law in ’72, the People Power Revolution in ’86, the government still operated, electrical power and water were still supplied, garbage was still collected, government projects still continued; and government officers, civil servants including teachers, if they were not at EDSA for the latter, went still to their offices and went about their work.

As they still do now despite the turmoil at the rarefied higher levels of government. At the higher echelons one sees gladiatorial political combats, the things that come out in the news and make for much public entertainment. The work of the rank and file hardly make it to the news but it is the true measure of how stable government is and how well it performs. Elective and appointive officials can have their new vision plans. But whatever these are they follow after and on top of previous visions that have been at work since even the time of their predecessors. This is an inescapable fact. This is historical continuity at work. Whatever is happening now at any agency or level of government is happening because of work done years, even decades, before.

We all operate inside inevitable constraints of history. Whatever gains or losses we now feel, we feel as a fact of history. They are inevitable consequences of previous acts. Where government and history is concerned, consequence is always long term. This is, unless everything starts going down the crap hole, and then things move South very quickly. Which is why most people in the rank and file worry about empty rhetoric leading to quick-fix adventures, projects that are meant to achieve public image goals and nothing else. They are always tiresome and pointless work. And the rank and file are the people to see first their pointlessness. Nevertheless, most of them will do the work assigned.

People in the rank and file take an oath to follow the orders of their superiors for as long as they are legal. Legal should be underscored. Legal should not be a contentious issue. It is clear cut. If anyone makes it less so, historical consequences follow. No one in government — including especially police and military — can be ordered to commit or abet the commission of crimes, especially murder. To this day, we are still paying the consequences of this act committed by the Marcoses in the time of martial law. One of those consequences is this thinking among some misguided leaders that the commission of murder is the only way the goal of peace and order can ever be achieved.

Even so, people in the rank and file are expected to do the work assigned by their superiors no matter if nefarious. Seldom are the rank and file ever consulted on how government should be run. In the case of the war on drugs, I would be greatly impressed if there was some effort, no matter how nominal, to consult policemen in the rank and file to determine what should be done. It may be argued if this is even possible and how useful would be the results. But even so, it could have started a tradition where government action could be guided from views from the bottom moving upwards through the rank and file. And this tradition might and could be applied for other agencies of government as well.

But as things now stand, the rank and file are hardly taken into account or even considered especially by elective and appointive officials of government; the less so, if they are prone to making decisions in a huff. Notwithstanding that these officials have terms lasting anywhere from one to six years only. By contrast, most of the rank and file have been doing the work of government for years and will be doing so until they retire from their often unheralded positions in government.