"Palmers and conspirators"

There is a deeply rooted evil in the arteries of politics and public administration that is measured in tons of lost dignity. It is a virus embodied by a breed of camouflage professionals, the sycophants who transform into conspirators. Dark characters who have never taken a risk, who have never made a brave decision and who have turned the exercise of public service into a mere board for personal survival.

The institutional sycophant is a tragic but dangerous figure. In public, their function is that of an ego amplifier. Their loyalty is not ideological, nor ethical, nor technical. It is strictly positional. They do not serve the citizen, nor do they even serve a party. They serve the person in front of them, knowing that their "permanence" depends on an apparent feverish submission. However, the true nature of these individuals is revealed when an official event ends. In the corridors, the sycophant mutates into a ruthless conspirator. There, flattery turns into mockery and admiration into contempt. They are experts at sowing doubt about the capacity of the very boss they have just praised. But they do so with mathematical cowardice. They never show their face. They use the discontent of civil servants or leak biased data so that others are burned at the stake of conflict. They prefer to watch the execution from the sidelines, ready to applaud the executioner or console the aggrieved, depending on the winds of convenience.

The great drama of this behavior is the panic of risk and responsibility. In a public administration that needs innovation, agility, and technical courage, the sycophant represents administrative paralysis. They will never sign anything that compromises their future if the political tides change. If an initiative goes well, they will unhesitatingly take the credit. If it goes wrong, they will remember in the shadows that they already saw the disaster coming.

This ecosystem of double standards systematically expels talent. Honest civil servants are labeled as problematic or disloyal for not participating in their schemes. Many politicians (often insecure and hungry for validation) prefer to surround themselves with the subtle lie of the sycophant rather than the uncomfortable truth of competent professionals. This is how blind governments are built, isolated from social reality, which only discover the failure of their policies when discontent culminates at the ballot box or in the courts.

Public administration will not be regenerated by merely changing government acronyms, but by eradicating this culture of submission and infidelity. It is urgent to limit arbitrary free appointment, enhance independent performance evaluation and, above all, begin to reward honesty over interested applause. As long as the system continues to reward those with many faces, institutions will continue to be governed by mediocrity and simulation. And the citizen, as always, will continue to pay for the party of those who applaud so as not to work.