THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS
Urgent need for civil servants to start rebuilding the trust of the public and regaining their respect
IDELAYED my trip to the office last Monday (May 21) to watch on television Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s first address to government officers in Putrajaya. It was his first meeting with the civil servants after he took office as Malaysia’s seventh prime minister. The historical event took place at Putra Square. He was greeted with a thunderous applause as he took to the stage just after 8.20am.
As I had expected, it was a short speech. He reminded the civil servants that Malaysia’s administration was once the best in the Commonwealth, but sadly it is not so now. “This is the struggle we have to go through to regain the respect we have lost”, he added.
He urged civil servants to rebuild the trust of the Malaysian people towards the public service and to work with him to restore the country to its former glory. He said: “Our country was wellrespected previously, but, now it is not the same as in the past. We must restore the country to ensure that it will be looked highly upon and respected once again,”
He also asked for their complete cooperation in the administration of the country. “As long as I don’t violate any laws, I hope all of you will give your undivided cooperation to me as the prime minister.”
What Dr Mahathir said that morning to the civil servants in Putrajaya reminded me of the memorable words of Sayyidina Abu Bakr As-Siddiq as he spoke to the people after he was appointed the first Caliph: “If I do good, then help me; if I do wrong, then correct me.”
It also reminded me of what Dr Mahathir had written on his blog a year ago, which was republished in a news portal (www.malaysiatoday.net) in April 2017. In that posting, Dr Mahathir said Malaysia had lost the respect of the international community due, for the most part, to the high level of corruption in this country to the extent that it has been labeled as “one of the most corrupt countries in the world”.
There are other reasons as well — including the “unresolved 1MDB scandal”, the “unexplained” RM2.6 billion in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s personal account (of which subsequently the Attorney-General had said there was no wrongdoing because it was “a gift from the Saudi royalty”), the sacking of auditors by 1MDB, and the fact that there had been no auditing of the 1MDB accounts over the last two years.
Reminding the civil servants that “Malaysia’s debt has reached an alarming trillion ringgit”, Dr Mahathir said important measures must be taken and many changes will have to be made so that the nation can recover quickly from its current situation.
He concluded by telling them: “We are confident that we can overcome the challenges but we need civil servants who are efficient and trustworthy to achieve these changes. As administrators, one must put the rule of law above all else and those tasked to carry out their duties must help to clean things up so that Malaysia can be on the road of recovery. All of us must work together to achieve this.”
The issue of trust in the government was raised by Chandra Muzaffar (chairman of the Board of Trustees of Yayasan 1 Malaysia) when he delivered a talk at a forum in Singapore two days after the 14th general election. He told his Singapore audience that the Malaysian voters rejected the Barisan Nasional coalition because of a “yawning trust deficit” between the BN leadership and the people, apart from the other issues mentioned, including the mismanagement of Felda.
Soon after he took office as prime minister, Dr Mahathir lifted the “Official Secrets” ban imposed on the 1MDB audit report, making it accessible by the general public. By that swift unexpected move, he was telling the people that they now have an open government, which is indeed a good start to rebuild public trust. The declassified report revealed, according to Dr Mahathir, “more wrongdoings committed than what was known to the public and me”.
More importantly, an open government is an integral element in the rule of law, which the new government had repeatedly sworn to uphold. According to the World Justice Project portal, the rule of law comprises four important elements — accountability, just laws, open government, and accessible and impartial dispute resolution.
With regained respect and trust, restoring confidence in the national economy should not pose an insurmountable task. That task has been given to the Council of Elders (also called Council of Eminent Persons), chaired by former finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin. Other members include Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Tan Sri Mohd Hassan Merican, Prof Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Tan Sri Robert Kuok. Unquestionably, the council has the collective expertise in fiscal and monetary policies necessary to do the job.
Daim told reporters on May 13 that the council would hold meetings daily for 100 days. “I want to finish this in 100 days. After that I want to sleep”, he joked. For this former finance minister, “people are king”, and not “cash is king”, and he wants the new government to uphold this all the time.
The clock is ticking. The countdown to 100 days has already begun.
What Dr Mahathir said that morning to the civil servants in Putrajaya reminds me of the memorable words of Sayyidina Abu Bakr as-Siddiq as he spoke to the people after he was appointed as the first Caliph in
Islam – ‘If I do good, then help me; if I do wrong, then correct me”.
The writer formerly served the Attorney-General’s Chambers before he left for private practice, the corporate sector and the academia