The new chief of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has pledged over the weekend to put an end to the old and destructive "palakasan" system in promotion and transfer of field officials to key field positions.

BIR Commissioner Kim Jacinto Henares said she will follow strictly the merit system, rewarding performers with important jobs and inefficient ones with insignificant jobs.

She said officials holding director's post down to district level will be judged solely on their performance in the coming months, ruling out the early reorganization of personnel.

"Each of them will be given a clean sheet of paper and it is up to them on how they will go about it," she said.

It is a common knowledge in the BIR that the pernicious "padre-padreno" scheme has been causing demoralization among rank-and-file adversely affecting its tax collection task.

She said it is a political reality that some politicians will work for the interest of their favorites in the bureaucracy but I will not succumb to such pressures."

She said, however, politicians may continue submitting recommendations "but I will have the final say believing in meritocracy."

Ms. Henares said many people in the BIR know her character and work habits being a former revenuer herself.

She was appointed deputy revenue commissioner for special concern in 2003 and left the bureau two years later in what some insiders described "policy differences" with then BIR Commissioner Jose Mario.