EDITORIAL - Changes for the sake of changing

In a boring class, you shift position and crack your knuckles to pretend you have not fallen asleep. The same could be true with governance. When nothing is happening, you feign activity by changing names and uniform colors. And so, from Citom, or City Traffic Operations Management, Cebu City's traffic agency is now called the Cebu City Traffic Office, or CCTO – please do not mistake it for conditional cash transfer office. And from blue, traffic enforcers will now wear green.

Since no responsible official has promised any real improvement to go with the changes, Cebuanos might as well take the development as nothing more than unspent inertia finally breaking free, a secret aesthetic and cosmetic longing eventually sprung for no reason other than to give way to springing. If this had been a gender issue, it would be somebody's idea of coming out.

Of course Cebuanos have no choice but to live with the ineffectual changes. It would have been a whole lot better, though, if real improvements can come with the changes. After all, dedication and efficiency are far better measures of public service than how a name sounds or what a uniform looks like. Given a choice, the public would rather have dedication and efficiency all the time, though provided by the unclothed and the unsung.

The expense that must necessarily come with the changes may not be skin off anybody's back as far as public expenditures go. But any expense, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant, is still unwise and wasted expense if it bears no fruit. And clearly a new name and a new color uniform are as barren a marriage as that between two eunuchs.

What a joy it would have been to the ears of everyone if the news that greeted Cebuanos one morning had been a promise of better traffic management resulting in less traffic gridlocks, of more courteous, committed and more visible traffic personnel. Substance, after all, is the essence of everything and not the marketing and packaging.

For while it helps to be marketed well and to be packaged neat and nice, the proof of the pudding still is and always will be in the eating. There are no second guesses about it. It is, therefore, a big surprise and a major mystery why the change of name and uniform seemed so necessary as to be implemented at all for no other reason than for its own sake of changing.

Again, the changes are not expected to inflect any unbearable pain nor cause any untold misery. But this being plainly and simply inexplicable and perplexing is never good public policy. And if someone needs to be reminded, then reminded that someone must be. Great leadership is reflected in right directions taken. Great decisions are easily understood. Great policies leave nothing to waste. Great changes make the sweet taste of success happen as if no changes happened at all.