No more passes for the incompetent and dangerous
One of the curses we have inherited from the 1980s is an aversion, a horror even, of the very notion of evaluation. There is no part of the country’s public sector that does not suffer from this ailment, not even the ones that are most vital. Ask an expert why some unjustified accident occurred in the navy and they’ll say that the ship had been captained by someone who should never have risen to the rank, who threw the crew into disarray and made such a mess that his successor was unable to put things to rights, leading to the accident. When you ask why he was allowed to rise through the ranks, the answer will be that the system of promotions relies on positive reviews from junior officers, meaning that everyone gets glowing marks.
Such stories are everywhere. Even the justice system is vehemently resisting the notion of evaluations, even though the criteria for what makes a decent judge should be pretty self-evident. You count the cases they have taken on, see how long it took to close them and assess the merits of their decisions. Despite an abundance of blatant cases of inefficiency and even violations of all ethical standards, the prevailing mentality is to keep it all under wraps. “If it comes out, it will harm the entire sector,” is one of the staple responses of those opposed to evaluations. But the damage is done. The delays in the dispensation of justice and the dysfunctions of the courts are widely seen as a major obstacle to the country’s progress. In the area of health, too, the data about Covid fatalities during the peak of the pandemic at every hospital were treated like a well-guarded secret. Education is another area that has been prone to reactions against performance assessments and even though some progress has been made, much ground needs to be covered still.
It goes without saying that we needed to move on to more “democratic” procedures, instead of sticking to the model of the untouchable boss in the public administration, in the armed forces, in the security services and at universities. But we went too far the other way, dispensing with discipline and professionalism.
The question now is how to change this culture when, oddly, it is not just unionists who object but also serious politicians, officials and even high-ranking clerics who are ready to pick up the phone and ask for a laggard to be given a break. By doing so, they are destroying any hope of an effective disciplinary or evaluation system. One exemption leads to another and eventually becomes the rule.
The only solution is for our politicians to ignore such calls, to appoint chiefs who are immune to such pressure. The system also needs to be made much more transparent, so that sins are not kept under wraps in the name of solidarity. Let us not forget that the stationmaster on duty on the night of the deadly rail crash at Tempe had passed his evaluation with flying colors to get the post. As is all too often the case – with obvious results.
