How I Reformed the Civil Service in South America (2)
Eugene had the kind of academic brilliance you'd expect from a graduate of one of Korea's most prestigious universities.
That was only natural. No matter how spectacularly the sacred art of multiple-choice guessing had activated on the day of the college entrance exam, you couldn't get into a top Korean university without the underlying ability to back it up. You needed at least a second-tier baseline before a critical hit could land you in the first tier.
Having made up his mind to evaluate the job competence of San Marcos's civil servants, the very first thing he did was create a textbook. If you were going to hold an exam, people needed to study, and if they were going to study, they needed a book. That was just common sense.
Eugene set to work compiling a civil service manual.
Together with Lucio and the SIA operatives who had once served in government themselves, he began documenting the slapdash, seat-of-the-pants administrative procedures that passed for official process, while simultaneously importing Portuguese and American textbooks and boiling them down into summaries.
The operatives were already stretched so thin that two bodies apiece wouldn't have been enough — but there was no other way. In San Marcos, nearly all of the country's skilled personnel were concentrated in the SIA.
That concentration had only accelerated after Eugene placed the SIA under the direct authority of the presidency. Combined with Isabella's ongoing campaign to recruit overseas-educated talent, the agency's human capital now rivaled that of any intelligence service in the world.
Two weeks after the work began, Eugene walked into a cabinet meeting carrying a stack of thick volumes.
"Thank you all for coming. Shall we begin?"
Throughout the meeting, the air in the conference room was as cold as the Siberian tundra. The vice ministers, who had no idea what any of this was about, trembled with the fear that the books sitting in front of Eugene contained a catalog of their own corruption.
I've only been burning through the budget lately — I haven't actually lined my own pockets...Wait, is it not even mine? Is it my subordinates'? Don't tell me he's going after us with collective punishment?Is he dredging up the stuff I pulled years ago?
Their terror was hardly unreasonable. This was Eugene Choi — the psychopathic killer who, on his first day in office, had snapped the neck of his political rival, Major General Tiago, with his bare hands. The cold-blooded operator who, two months ago, had dumped 1,500 of Libertad's gangsters into the hellish furnace of the Central Basin and put them to forced labor. Purges and gulags. Conduct indistinguishable from Iosif Stalin, Georgia's human butcher of a bygone age.
If I get caught... I'm dead!
The only sound filling the silence was the gulp of swallowed saliva.
"All right, that covers the agenda. I have an announcement for all of you today."
At last the meeting ended, and Eugene lifted one of the books for them to see.
"This volume contains the fundamentals of constitutional and administrative law, guidelines for drafting official documents, instructions on using office software, plus high-school-level general knowledge and English and Portuguese grammar."
"...?"
"You could call it a comprehensive textbook covering everything a civil servant ought to know, along with a complete operations manual."
Bewilderment crept into the vice ministers' eyes at this unexpected explanation. Not a kill list — a textbook? What on earth was this bolt from the blue?
"And why would you..."
One vice minister asked the question cautiously. Eugene smiled pleasantly as he answered.
"I intend to offer all of you an opportunity to learn."
"An opportunity... to learn, sir?"
"Yes. They say a person should keep learning until the day they die. And so..."
Eugene paused for a beat, then dropped the bomb.
"...?!"
"I've already dispatched trucks to every ministry, as well as their subordinate agencies and regional offices, and distributed copies matched exactly to headcount. By now, a very handsome copy should be sitting on the desk in each of your offices."
Eugene tapped the cover of the book, smiling with infuriating warmth.
"Don't worry about the cost of purchase. I paid for them out of my own pocket. All you have to do is 'open,' 'read,' 'memorize,' and 'absorb.' Easy, right?"
"......"
"The exam will be administered simultaneously across every ministry. From the vice ministers sitting in this room down to the greenest junior clerk who started yesterday — not a single person is exempt."
Eugene's gaze swept across the vice ministers one by one.
"Two weeks is plenty of time, isn't it? Please reduce any unnecessary work during the remaining period and devote yourselves to studying. I trust that none of you would disgrace the face of this nation by failing to master even these basic competencies."
"......"
"Well then, everyone — go study. I'll be looking forward to the results."
Eugene opened the door to leave, then turned back as if something had just occurred to him.
"Ah — there will be penalties for those who rank at the bottom, so you'd best prepare thoroughly."
With that, he closed the door behind him.
Thud.
A massive stone dropped onto every vice minister's chest.
That night, the senior officials of every ministry gathered at a villa overlooking the sea on the outskirts of Libertad.
In President Juan's era, a meeting like this would have dissolved into a drinking party the moment it adjourned. In Eugene's era, that was no longer possible. After watching bureaucrats who had habitually neglected their duties get dragged off to the mines, they had each returned to their own ministries and only reassembled once the workday was over.
And gathering like this was a stupid thing to do in the first place. There was no telling when or where the SIA might be watching. But if these men had possessed the brains to anticipate that, they wouldn't have been scammed out of five million dollars and flushed two million dollars' worth of vaccines down the drain. They were military academy graduates who had spent their army years sucking up to their superiors, then become bureaucrats and drunk their way up the promotion ladder. Their capacity for thought had long since sunk below average. Without a thought for the consequences, they huddled together and began to denounce Eugene.
As the mood caught fire, the Vice Minister of Construction and Housing tore his tie loose and bellowed.
"Drinks! Get me a drink! The strongest you've got!"
"Easy, now. Your blood pressure."
"Easy? Do I look like a man who can take it easy? At my age... with my years of service! An exam? Is that even a thing a person can say out loud?!"
The Vice Minister of Agriculture, already flushed and thoroughly drunk, chimed in with gusto.
"That's what I'm saying! Who do we think we are? We're the pillars who've held this country up since the founding of San Marcos! And now he wants us to learn computers? Excel? That's what you mash when you floor it in a car, isn't it?"
"And what about English? Back in my day, as long as you knew 'Thank you' and 'Fuck you,' you could get by just fine! But now it's conversation this, grammar that... Bah!"
"Studying math at my age!"
Men who had spent their entire lives in the army and the bureaucracy held doctorates in dressing down their inferiors, but sitting at a desk and reading print made them no better than elementary school children.
"This is a blatant insult! He's trying to drive us out — that's what this is!"
"Exactly! That young bastard grabs power and suddenly he thinks he's untouchable!"
After a long stretch of sputtering and cursing, the Director of Commerce — who was considered relatively sharp by the standards of the room — opened his mouth with care.
"We can't just sit here and take it, can we? We need to make a move."
"What kind of move? Pedro and the armored division are standing right behind the Acting President. You want to try a coup?"
"Are you insane? You want to end up like Major General Tiago?"
At the mention of Tiago's name, a brief silence fell. The cruelty of the Korean gangster who could snap a man's neck with his bare hands was terror itself to them.
"That's all the more reason to show him a united front."
The Director of Commerce made his proposal with a grim, resolute expression.
"We turn in blank papers."
"Blank papers?"
"Yes. Every last one of us writes only our name on the answer sheet and submits it empty. We make the people under us turn in blanks as well. If it's one or two people, he'll discipline them. If the entire civil service scores a zero, even the Acting President won't be able to do a thing about it."
"But if the Acting President decides to get vicious..."
"If he fires all of us, who's going to run the country? The administration would be paralyzed. Can he afford that kind of aftermath?"
Put that way, it almost sounded plausible. Of course, it only sounded plausible — if anything of the sort actually came to pass, Isabella would not sit idle for a second. But they were already drunk, and they couldn't see an inch past their own noses.
"There's... something to that!"
"Now that is a hell of an idea!"
"Leave it to Commerce to actually use their heads! Hahaha!"
"All right! We all turn in blanks and wipe that smug look off the Acting President's face!"
The so-called Blank Paper Alliance. They were convinced they had found a counterpunch to Eugene's tyranny.
"Ahem. If you'll excuse me, I need to visit the restroom."
After the Director of Commerce had stepped out, the rest of them kept pouring and drinking — until a trembling voice rose from the corner of the room.
"However..."
The Vice Minister of the Interior, who had been watching everyone's faces and saying nothing, finally spoke up.
"Have you... heard the rumor?"
"What rumor?"
"The rumor that the bottom ten percent on this exam... get sent to Tortilla Farm."
"......!"
Silence dropped over the room as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water across the floor.
Tortilla Farm. They all knew what that place was. Fifteen hundred vicious gangsters locked in and working cornfields fourteen hours a day under a blazing sun — a legendary gulag from which even a gang boss was said to emerge, three days later, as a meek little lamb. And the thought of eating, sleeping, and laboring right alongside 1,500 of those men? It would be a living hell. There was no other word for it.
Crash!
The Vice Minister of Construction and Housing dropped the glass in his hand. Whiskey soaked into the floor, and nobody cared.
"Is that true?"
"There's a rumor that Chief of Staff Isabella has placed an order for two thousand tents. This exam may be nothing more than a vehicle for a purge..."
Fear burned the alcohol out of them in a single instant. Solidarity, united fronts — none of it mattered. If they weren't careful, they were the ones who were going to get dragged away.
"......"
The vice ministers began watching one another out of the corners of their eyes. You could only afford to resist if you were still here to do it. What good was defiance once you'd been hauled off?
The Blank Paper Alliance, so hastily forged, began to crack. There wasn't a single person in that room with the guts to spin a cylinder of Russian roulette that might send them to the gulag.
"Ahem. Something urgent just occurred to me. I ought to be getting home."
Glancing at one another, the officials rose from their seats as if on cue, gathering up their coats in a rustle of poorly concealed panic.
"I should too... the wife told me to come home early tonight."
"Right, right — let's call it a night!"
"We shouldn't be doing this anyway. Drinking late in times like these — it's not a good look!"
And so, with everyone already dissolving toward the door—
"Wait, where is everyone going?"
The Director of Commerce, returning from the restroom, called after them in a hurry. The only answer he received was silence. The conspiracy had collapsed in less than an hour.
And the vice ministers, upon arriving home from the villa, walked inside, wiped the dust from the desks in their long-neglected studies, found their reading glasses, and began studying through the night.
For no reason other than to stay alive.