A safe and well-paid shelter for the useless and unqualified.
A safe and well-paid shelter for useless people without credentials.
All political parties assume that, if they win elections, they will place their best people in positions of public responsibility. Then comes the dull reality of political bargaining, which quickly takes precedence over the public interest to prevent parliamentary chaos.
The Frente Amplio was no exception. It promised a government of the best, regardless of ideology. No one believed it. Supporters came with knives between their teeth, and opponents knew these promises by heart. They were meant only to dress up the naked king.
The most hypocritical aspect of this approach is its insistence on competitive exams for entering public service, except for positions within the Executive branch or the highest levels of the Legislature.
They demand merit from others while political appointments flourish. Positions of “special trust,” direct advisory roles, family nepotism, quotas disguised as gender equality, or the old excuse of being “highly prepared for…” remain untouched.
People are appointed who are functionally illiterate in ideological terms and lack any specific preparation.
Those who would not qualify even as doormen in the private sector shamelessly occupy high administrative posts. The historical and current results are plain to see.
This ode to “selective virtue,” granted by political favor, summarizes the paradox. For some, competitive exams, minimum education, and extraordinary luck are required. For the highest institutional offices, singers of slogans, color quotas, sexual ambiguity tokens, or mere symbolic references to professionalism suffice, often backed by another semi-illiterate friend.
Arotxa captured it perfectly. He drinks alfalfa tea, but he has many votes.
Oh, sacred equality of the humble.
That thunderous cry. Either for everyone or for no one.
A phrase carved in the marble of sacrifice, now embroidered on silk handkerchiefs by hands that never touched a plow.
What a delight to observe the scales of Justice. So precise for the young man seeking a desk job, forced to prove intellectual brilliance, academic rigor, and spotless exam performance.
For him, the door is narrow and the wall is high. There is no greater sin in democracy than a public servant who cannot recite his own grammar.
But what an exquisite spectacle unfolds at the summit. There, where the air is thinner and the wine more expensive, preparation is an outdated vulgarity.
Why endure the nuisance of competitive exams when one possesses the supreme talent of being a friend.
This is the most beautiful paradox of our time. We demand genius from those who serve coffee, drive cars, or operate elevators, while embracing emptiness in those who shape national destiny.
Trust is the only credential that requires no ink. A political appointment shines brightest when the merit of its holder is weakest.
A homeland for everyone, certainly.
For those below, the rigor of the law and the exam. For those above, the warm embrace of fortune.
In a world of appearances, only the naïve believe that governing requires anything more than a good friend and a convenient relationship.
“The duty is what we expect from others, never what we demand of ourselves.”
The Funnel of Meritocracy. A homeland for everyone. For the comrades.
In the Uruguayan collective imagination, the phrase “There will be a homeland for everyone, or for no one” resonates like a sacred oath. A promise of a table without head seats, where one person’s right is everyone’s right.
Yet in the chessboard of contemporary public administration, deeply indebted to technology, this principle has undergone a geometric mutation. It has become a funnel.
Just like Article 8 of the Constitution, it has been prostituted by those who claim to defend equality.
The exam for the rank and file.
The Frente Amplio, champion of competency-based administration, has zealously defended the banner of equality.
Social-communists cling tightly to the public exam manual, for others.
Their mission was to end old clientelism in lower and middle ranks, which they had already colonized through unions.
To clean a hospital, file documents, or become an administrative clerk, citizens must submit to scrutiny of training and merit. Education is required. Schooling is counted. Knowledge tests and lotteries are imposed.
Here, the homeland is for everyone who manages to clear the hurdle of competence among thousands competing for a secure salary and an uncomplicated job.
The oasis of special trust.
Raise your eyes to the peaks of the Executive and Legislative branches, and the landscape changes abruptly.
Preparation ceases to be a measurable requirement and becomes an ethereal quality called political trust.
It is almost literary that while the base of the pyramid is professionalized, the summit, where decisions affecting economic growth, security, and education are made, remains exam-free territory.
In positions of special trust, loyalty outweighs curriculum. Personal, ideological, prison-born, or family closeness prevails.
The contradiction is blatant.
At the operational level, the most capable is sought through rigorous processes.
At the strategic level, the closest is accepted, often without specific training in the area they must manage.
This duality produces a bureaucracy at two speeds. A mass of civil servants who entered through the narrow gate of merit, and a political elite walking the red carpet of direct appointment.
If competitive exams guarantee transparency and efficiency, why can the country afford to discard them precisely where responsibility is greatest.
While official discourse celebrates equal opportunity, institutional reality suggests that the homeland for everyone ends at the doors of hierarchical offices, dependent solely on the pointing finger.
In the next article, we will examine how people enter through the window, and the consequences of governing failure.