By Horace Palacio: Today I want to talk about a quiet decision made a quarter century ago that broke something important in Belize, and almost nobody talks about it.
In 2000, the Government of Belize abolished the post of Permanent Secretary and replaced it with the Chief Executive Officer.
Most Belizeans shrugged. It sounded like a simple name change. Permanent Secretary sounded old and colonial. Chief Executive Officer sounded modern and businesslike. What difference could a title make?
All the difference in the world. Because it was never a name change. It was a change in who the top of your public service answers to.
Let me explain what we lost.
For the first two decades of independence, the administrative head of every ministry was a Permanent Secretary. Note the first word. Permanent. This was a career public officer who had climbed the service over decades, who held the post on merit, and who stayed in place while ministers and governments came and went. The minister brought the politics. The Permanent Secretary ran the machine. Elections changed the driver. They did not burn down the engine room.
That design was not an accident. It is the spine of the entire Westminster system we claim to follow. Politicians decide policy, because the people elected them to. A permanent, professional, politically neutral service executes that policy, keeps the files, keeps the memory, and keeps the state running no matter who wins.
Then came 2000, and we replaced that spine with something else entirely. The CEO. A political appointee. Hired at the pleasure of the government of the day. And swept out the door the moment that government falls.
Look at what happens now after every single election. The winning party announces its slate of CEOs across the ministries, a whole new top layer of the state, chosen by the victors. We reported the latest full slate right here on Breaking Belize News after the last election. Win the government, and you win the right to install your people at the head of every ministry in the land.
Now let me walk you through what this system actually costs us, because the damage is deeper than most people realize.
First, we execute our institutional memory every five years. A ministry is not just a building. It is relationships, files, hard-earned lessons, projects in mid-stream. Under the CEO system, the head of all of that walks out after every change of government, and a newcomer starts from scratch. Then we wonder why projects die between administrations and why government seems to have no memory. It has no memory because we keep performing surgery on its brain.
Second, we built a system of yes men. Ask yourself one simple question. Can a CEO who owes his job entirely to the minister look that minister in the eye and say, no, Minister, that would be wrong, that would be wasteful, that may even be unlawful? Of course not. His mortgage answers to the minister. A Permanent Secretary with security of tenure could speak that sentence, because his job did not depend on pleasing the politician in front of him. It depended on serving Belize. We did not just change a title in 2000. We removed the one person in every ministry who could safely tell the truth to power.
Third, we hung a glass ceiling over every honest public officer in this country. Under the old system, a bright young officer could dream of one day rising, on merit, to the very top of the service. Today the top job in every ministry is reserved. Not for the best. For the connected. So what message do we send our most capable public servants? Work hard, master your craft, and watch a party loyalist be installed above you after the next election. Then we wonder why our eagles leave the service, or leave the country. We built the ceiling ourselves.
Fourth, the rot flows downhill. When the head of the ministry is political, everything beneath learns to be political. Transfers, promotions, hiring, who gets sidelined, who gets favored. Analysts who have studied our public service have said plainly that its politicization has done serious damage to a system that is required by law to be impartial, fair and non-political. That is not Horace talking. That is the assessment of people who study governance for a living, and they have argued for restoring a permanent professional senior service for years.
Now let me be fair, because there was an argument for the change. The old service was called slow. Governments said they needed dynamic managers aligned with their agenda to get things done. Fine. It has been twenty five years. I ask every Belizean one question. Did it work? Is government faster now? More efficient? Less wasteful? Ask the citizen waiting months for a simple document. Ask the businessman drowning in delays. We traded the professionalism of the service for a promise of efficiency, and we received neither.
And let me be equally fair about the politics. The PUP created this system in 2000. The UDP inherited it in 2008 and kept it for twelve comfortable years. The PUP took it back in 2020 and uses it still. Of course they all keep it. Why would any party surrender a toy that hands it the top of the entire state after every victory? The CEO system is the most bipartisan institution in Belize. Which is exactly why the demand to end it must come from us, the people, because it will never come from them.
So here is what must be done, plainly.
Restore the post of Permanent Secretary, in law, and entrench it so no future government can casually undo it. Fill it through the Public Service Commission, on merit, from the ranks of our best professionals, with real security of tenure. Enforce the code of conduct that requires the service to be politically neutral, from top to bottom. And if ministers need political advice, let them hire a small number of openly declared political advisors, paid transparently, who advise on politics and touch nothing else. Politics may visit the ministry. It must never again own it.
None of this weakens an elected government. A minister with a professional Permanent Secretary still sets every policy. What he loses is only this, the power to bend the machinery of state to his party. And any politician who objects to losing that power has just told you exactly why he must lose it.
We were given a professional public service at independence. In 2000 we traded it away for a system of political reward, and we have been paying for it in broken continuity, silenced truth, and demoralized talent ever since.
Twenty five years is enough evidence.
No more CEOs. Bring back the Permanent Secretary. Give Belize back a public service that serves Belize.
Reference: the replacement of the Permanent Secretary post with the Chief Executive Officer in 2000, and arguments for restoring a permanent professional senior public service, are drawn from the Centre for Strategic Studies, Policy Analysis and Research discussion paper published in Amandala.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, Horace Palacio, and do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial stance of Breaking Belize News.
The post No more CEOs, bring back the Permanent Secretary appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
By Horace Palacio: Today I want to talk about a quiet decision made a quarter century ago that broke something important in Belize, and almost nobody talks about it. In 2000, the Government of Belize abolished the post of Permanent Secretary and replaced it with the Chief Executive Officer. Most Belizeans shrugged. It sounded like
The post No more CEOs, bring back the Permanent Secretary appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
