The Tale of Personnel Reform in South America (3)
San Marcos has an extraordinarily small civil service.
How small? Paraguay — same continent, similar population — employs over three hundred thousand public servants. San Marcos has barely a quarter of that: just over eighty thousand.
Why?
You need money to pay salaries, for one thing.
They simply didn't have it. The country was too poor to collect taxes, and without tax revenue there was no capacity to hire anyone. The result: each civil servant was responsible for 75.6 citizens. That soared past even South Korea's 53.6 — already the highest ratio among OECD nations — and stood as a grim statistic proving that "welfare" in San Marcos was a word that meant nothing at all.
And the quality of those civil servants? Even worse. Public education had collapsed, so their intellectual level lagged behind that of a Korean high school student. On top of that, ninety-nine percent were former military, and the organizational culture had calcified beyond mere rigidity — it had set like concrete.
They weren't even good at following orders the way soldiers are supposed to be. Take the tractor incident I'd ordered the Ministry of Agriculture to handle. I'd instructed them to buy used tractors from Mexico and lease them cheaply to corn and wheat farms. The vice minister dumped it on a bureau director, who immediately tossed it further down the chain. In the end, subordinates with neither the experience nor the rank barreled forward like an eight-ton truck with a broken steering wheel and got the entire five-million-dollar budget stolen in a scam.
At that point, you could call them a pack of morons rather than a national administration and nobody would argue.
One week after holding the First National Civil Service Examination to reform this organization, Isabella arrived with the results.
"I shall report, Your Excellency."
"Go ahead."
She set a thick stack of result sheets on the desk.
"Of 80,243 total examinees, those who failed the minimum — that is, who scored below 40 out of 100 — number 41,812."
"More than half failed... As expected, it's a massacre."
"Yes. Eighty percent of senior officials fall into this category. Among the vice ministers, one even scored a four."
"A four?"
"Yes. We designed the questions to have genuine discriminatory power, so these results were perhaps inevitable."
"Even random guessing should have scored better than that. You're sure the grading isn't wrong?"
"The examination was one hundred percent multiple choice, scored by computer. The probability of error is vanishingly small."
I was so stunned I could only laugh. With people this far below the minimum occupying the nation's senior posts, of course the whole place was a dumpster fire.
"And the high scorers?"
"This is the list of the top three percent."
I scanned the names. Every one of them was unfamiliar.
"Hmm. They're all young."
Isabella stepped closer.
"We have begun the second-round screening of those who passed the written examination. I have mobilized the SIA to review every draft, proposal, and report these individuals have ever submitted."
"So you're investigating their past performance."
"Correct. We must separate the wheat from the chaff. And... once that work is complete, I would like to conduct interviews."
"Interviews too? Can't we just select the top scorers and promote them?"
"We must verify their ideology."
"Ideo...logy verification?"
"Yes. We must confirm they harbor no thoughts that could harm the state. No matter how capable they may be, we cannot promote anyone who lacks loyalty to Your Excellency."
Why was loyalty coming into this?
"Do we really need to go that far..."
"It is an essential procedure. Please grant your permission."
I nodded, overwhelmed by Isabella's sheer force of will.
"...Very well."
What else could I do? When the real power behind the throne wanted something, you did it.
Isabella did not hesitate. In a single day, she had thoroughly investigated every individual who scored in the top three percent and brought me the report.
Their achievements as public servants, their attitudes toward work, their reputations among colleagues — and even their everyday speech, the political leanings of the people they were close to...
"Was it really necessary to investigate their private lives as well?"
"People reveal their true thoughts when speaking with those they are close to. As a result, they inevitably gravitate toward others of similar inclination. Only by investigating the private sphere can ideology be verified."
It felt somewhat unsettling, but I let it go, assuming she knew what she was doing. Birds of a feather flock together, after all. No matter how brilliant or capable someone was, you couldn't use them if their character was garbage.
After all that winnowing, forty-three people remained, and Isabella summoned them in secret.
The interviewers: myself and Isabella. She would handle most of the questions. My job was to sit beside her and set the tone.
Just stare at them with dignity, she said.
The first interviewee of our two-person panel was Sophia, a Grade 7 officer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her exam score placed her around the top five percent — not quite the absolute elite — but Isabella had specifically recommended her as someone we had to see.
"A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Sophia. Looking at your resume, you've spent eight years exclusively at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?"
"Y-yes! Th-th-that's correct."
"There is no need to tremble so. We do not eat people. Please make yourself comfortable."
"B-but His Excellency is here. How could I possibly..."
What am I, Voldemort? She's shaking just from looking at my face.
"I understand, but if you keep shaking like that, will you be able to answer properly? Or are you saying you do not mind letting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip away?"
"Ah...!"
Startled by Isabella's remark, Sophia began taking deep breaths. Isabella continued in her deadpan voice.
"It is unusual to remain in a single department for so long. Is there a particular reason?"
"I applied for transfers to other ministries, but my superiors refused to let me go."
"Why is that?"
"I speak a number of foreign languages. Because of that, I was frequently pulled out as an interpreter."
"Could you tell us which languages you speak?"
"English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Russian."
"How did you manage to learn so many languages? There would not have been anywhere to teach you."
"I enjoy watching films, so I learned by watching movies from each country."
"You can learn conversational fluency just from watching movies?"
"It's possible."
When Sophia answered in English, Isabella switched to French.
"Pouvez-vous me dire comment?" — Can you tell me how?
"Я посмотрел более 100 фильмов из каждой страны." — I watched over a hundred films from each country.
I couldn't suppress my amazement at the sight of her answering in Russian. How can a talent like this even exist in a country like this? She was like a flower blooming in the Arctic.
And looking at her record, there wasn't a single thing to criticize. She was a rare case — a former servicewoman turned civil servant — and her reputation was excellent. Her colleagues respected her.
I met Isabella's eyes. This one's a pass. She nodded, confirming we were of the same mind.
"Sophia. If you were promoted, could you handle it?"
"Pardon? Pro...moted?"
"Yes. Promoted."
Sophia hesitated, trying to process what that meant, then caught my imposing gaze, sprang to her feet, and shouted.
"I'll do my very best!"
"Simply doing your best is not enough. You must approach this with the resolve to die, matching the expectations His Excellency has placed upon you."
"Yes! I will stake my life on giving everything I have!"
The interviews continued. And I came to realize that San Marcos still had hope.
There were actually competent people here...
They weren't quite at Sophia's level, but there were quite a few of outstanding ability. The fifth interviewee, Mateo from the Ministry of Science and Technology, had completely internalized San Marcos's telecommunications network — every installation, every type of equipment, every function it served. The fifteenth, Diego, had spent a decade in customs intercepting over 1,500 smuggling cases, only to be demoted when he couldn't withstand threats from the gangs and pressure from his superiors. The thirty-second interviewee — and the only senior official among them — was Arn, Director of the Safety Bureau at the Ministry of Construction, an expert among experts who had even earned a Professional Structural Engineer license in the United States.
And among them all, one man stood out above the rest.
"Ricardo, Grade 7 officer, Ministry of Commerce! It is the honor of a lifetime to stand before Your Great Excellency!"
That was Ricardo of the Ministry of Commerce. A young man whose shoulders had gone rigid with tension. Behind his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes darted anxiously — but personally, he was the talent I was most excited about.
Valedictorian of the Economics Department at UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico...
He wasn't from a military background, so after returning to San Marcos he'd spent five years doing nothing but making copies and fetching coffee. That, if anything, made me like him more. At the very least, it meant he hadn't been tainted yet.
Isabella seemed to share the sentiment. A smile played at her lips as she began her questions.
"Mr. Ricardo. According to your records, you submitted a report three years ago on establishing an industrial bank?"
"Yes, that's correct."
"And why was it rejected?"
It was a question with an obvious answer, but a necessary one. What mattered was what he'd thought through that process, and how he'd overcome it.
Ricardo hesitated, his lips working, then spoke carefully.
"I believe my proposal was inadequate."
"Inadequate? Why do you think that?"
"I overlooked the fact that the country has no money."
"San Marcos may be poor, but it has more than enough money to establish a single bank."
"I was too brief. As you say, Chief of Staff, the state has the capacity to establish a bank. What I failed to consider was that even if we built one, the people who would deposit money in it are poor."
"...A fair point."
He was right. There was no point in founding a bank if it couldn't attract deposits.
"Have you given any thought to a solution?"
"Yes."
"Please explain."
Ricardo launched into his explanation like a fish that had found water.
"We attract branches of foreign banks."
"You mean bring foreign banks into the country and let them profit from the interest rate spread?"
"Exactly."
"Hmm... I doubt they'd come just like that."
"If we guarantee them high interest rates, they'll have more than enough incentive to enter San Marcos."
"Wouldn't the cost be too high?"
"San Marcos, as it stands, cannot afford to fear interest. What it should fear is remaining trapped in poverty."
He raised his index finger.
"Right now, you can barely find a single product stamped Made in San Marcos on the market. Why? Because there is no industrial base. Even if someone wanted to open a textile factory, they'd have to import every last machine — and the banks' doors are shut."
"If the government took on that role..."
Ricardo shook his head, cutting Isabella off.
"That would be a mistake. State-led projects may be large-scale and stable, but they cannot reach the capillaries of the economy. True economic development must begin in the private sector."
Heat began to enter his voice.
"But look at San Marcos's private entrepreneurs right now. They have nowhere to borrow. At best they take loans from loan sharks at murderous interest rates, or they abandon their ventures entirely. In an environment like this, even if Steve Jobs were born here, he'd starve to death in a garage."
"So you'd bring in foreign banks to inject capital?"
"Yes. Foreign banks are flush with capital. If we guarantee them a high interest spread and ease regulations, they will gladly open branches in San Marcos. That capital will flow into the private lending market, which will in turn lead to startups and investment."
"A great deal of national wealth could flow out of the country."
"In the short term, it will look as though money is leaving in the form of interest. But over the long run, the tax revenue and employment generated by the companies that grow from that capital will far exceed the interest flowing out."
A lucid explanation. He had pinpointed, with surgical precision, the capital trap that poor nations fall into.
"And above all."
Ricardo paused to catch his breath, then finished with a look of absolute conviction.
Silence.
Today's top candidate had just been born.