The Leader and his civil service

I am afraid, I am not finished yet on the subject of the Malay mind. You see, the e mail from the 65 year old Malay gentleman is such a fertile ground for discussion and commentaries. After this, I shall expand on an e mail I received from a retired Chinese gentleman from Johor Bharu who has offered some interesting personal observations.

I am disturbed that some people see these serialised articles as opening the doors for Malay bashing. I cannot accept that argument. I think, if these article have done that, they have the unintended effect of allowing us Malays, know what non Malays think of us. We can look at them in a positive manner. I'd rather know what my opponent is thinking rather than not knowing.

Here is another gloss from the Malay gentleman's e mail.

Picking winners.

Sometime in 1994, Lee Kuan Yew spoke about the 'Singapore way' of picking winners. Singapore willed a system whereby invariably the best come forward to serve the country. It seems that it has worked in Singapore. Its economy is the strongest in this part of the world. Its civil service is considered one of the best. It has so many success stories that are attributable to its leadership and efficient administration. The best and brightest lead and manage the country.

In the early years, Lee Kuan Yew was reported to have said, that the fate of Singapore depended on around 250 people. That if these 250 people were to be put on a plane and the plane exploded, that would be the end of Singapore. The difference between success and failure is therefore leadership and management quality of the country.

I won't say, the same system can be transplanted elsewhere en bloc. How do we ensure the leadership of this country and management is entrusted in the hands of good people, determined, possessed of integrity and drive to run this country? Do we leave it to chance hoping that out of 26 million people, some good people will emerge? Or can we devise and put up a system, raising the probabilities that good people will emerge and let it be part of our country's DNA?

A long time ago, external stimuli- fight against colonialism, struggles against oppression, fights for independence enabled the emergence of leaders by natural selection. Yet nowadays, the external stimuli do not exist so as to allow the emergence of natural leaders. The attrition rate is simply too high. So it seems we can't let chance and fortuitous events determine the emergence of leaders. If we can't, then, we have to find a system.

It would seem that having a system is better than leaving everything to chance and hoping. It must be a system, where through a process, and not leaving things to chance and luck of the draw, something good can be induced to come forward. Such a system, if desired needs to be moderated, adjusted it need be.

But what Lee Kuan Yew mentioned about the Singapore system becoming the conventional way of choosing winners in the future, was the point that has somehow proven to be prescient. The wisdom of putting up with a system is now credible thinking.

What's the Singapore way? It's not something proprietary so , we can save our breath and not shout out a xenophobic objection to anything Singapore. I know for some people , mention anything Singapore can stir up demented responses. Let us be rational for a moment. It became Singapor-ised because, political will was applied to the process. The top leadership wanted it that way. So if Malaysia has the political will, it becomes the Malaysian way.

Just last week, our PM was saying something to the effect of wanting the best to surface in the civil service- about creating an ecosystem. So, we can also say, the top leadership wants it. His wish must be followed by a political will, reflected in the principles, polices, and choice of the people leading and managing this country. How? Will it be achieved by just imagining it, or will come about as a result of a deliberate and calculative action?

It must be a process. It must begin, by laying the foundations that ensure, on a higher probability, that good people will emerge. It must be system that incorporate the principle of rewarding those with better intelligence and ability, better. If those with lesser accomplishments are rewarded the same as those with better abilities, the system breaks down. Because then, those with better and superior abilities will not enter the system. That can happen, when we manoeuvre the system to override objective considerations and condone excessive interference.

We tweaked the system the wrong way allowing those with lower abilities to come forward. Instead of excellence which the PM desires, we are saddled with mediocrity. Why? Then we have those cunning characters, those who cut corners, those whose vocation is to be the man Fridays to superiors, rise to the top. We then have a civil service dominated by talent deficient people.

As it is, something must be terribly wrong with the elements of that foundation , if something such as that happening in Penang recently, where a senior government servant can speak ill of an elected head of the government. That such a character if representative of the civil service as a whole exists, then it would mean, really, the civil service can be potentially insubordinate. The elected political leadership cannot operate with an insubordinate civil service or even with a public servant that appear to be insubordinate. The immediate solution is to demand the resignation of such a person.

The distinguished general who headed the American theater of war in Afghanistan was asked to retire because of unflattering remarks the general made of the US Vice President. The general is seen to be insubordinate- but the US president knows he can't operate the government with this kind of character.

The SDO ( state development officer) is probably among the top five civil servants at the state level- behind the SS, SFINO, SDO, etc etc. He oversees the award of federal projects in the state and by virtue of being the representative of the federal government in a state controlled by an opposition party, must have felt at par with the CM. He thinks he can act as a government within a government.

Lim Guan Eng is an elected head of the government of the day. It does not matter whether he is a federal civil servant or sate civil servant- he is bound by the conventional practice of governance. That some civil servant can come out in open defiance to an elected leader reflects the failure of our ecosystem in turning out the best. Instead it has produced some of the haughtiest employee given strength by an officious position.

Several years ago, Nazri Aziz was embroiled in a verbal fracas with a top officer of the BPR( now MACC). Nazri went ballistic and public by saying, we, the politicians are your masters. We don't like the way he said it, but he was right in the sense, political leaders are elected and in that sense are owed obedience and deference.

Would such a behaviour be tolerated if it were an UMNO head of government that was shamed? The civil servant would be transferred within 24 hours. Not so long ago, Khir Toyo presented a senior civil servant( he must also be a MCS officer) with a broom which to the Malay is sial. The civil servant didn't say Khir Toyo was biadab in public. In private, I am sure Khir Toyo was roundly denounced. Not a murmur from the Chief Secretary to the government then. Now we the CS defending the actions of this particular civil servant.

How is this narration related to the issue of a system or a process that sieve through the dirt so that pebbles of gold will remain? Because the quality of the person coming out, depends on the process. Obviously, if this kind of character rises to the top, then something is fundamentally wrong with the ecosystem prevailing over the civil service. Obviously to my mind, something is wrong to have allowed this kind of civil servant to emerge and rise to the top of his profession.

We have 1.2 million civil servants serving 26 million people. Out of every 26 people, one is a civil servant. What's their primary purpose? Their primary function is how to make our lives better by way of the service they give us, the way they treat at the counters, the way they manage the country's assets which we entrust them to do. They are here to improve the lives of people, not to make us feel miserable. The general feeling when one deals with civil servants nowadays, is that it seems we owe them a living- they what they are giving us, is their own property.

Why do we need 1.2 million civil servants in the first place. Make some comparisons. Taiwan, with a population similar to us at 28 million, has only 530,000 government employees. That's about half of what we have. Japan with a 120 million population employs 380,000 civil servants. This means, the average Jap civil servant is brainy and productive. Malaysia has 1.2 million civil servants who provide us with dismal service most of the times, and their offices are dreary and gloomy places of work.

The character of the Malaysian civil service is this. Haughty at the top and mediocre at the lower levels. But no one politician has the guts to say our civil service is rotten. We should now bring back a minister in charge of the civil service, tasked of revamping the service and raising the quality of our civil servants. We should immediately take steps to halve the number of civil servants. It shouldn't be employment for employment sake anymore.