Size matters, just ask my….
Who wants to be a backbencher when all you can do is to talk and talk but no executive powers to get the job done? Hence by expanding the cabinet to 69 (29+40 ) almost all BN parliamentarians have a more than 50 per cent chance of getting an executive job.
James Chin, The Malaysian Insider
Why are people all excited over the size of the new cabinet? 29 ministers and 40 deputy ministers. So what? The previous administration had 31 ministers and slightly less deputy ministers.
Should we all get excited? I mean come' on, when you get into parliament, you would want a real job with real power, right?
Who wants to be a backbencher when all you can do is to talk and talk but no executive powers to get the job done? Hence by expanding the cabinet to 69 (29+40 ) almost all BN parliamentarians have a more than 50 per cent chance of getting an executive job.
Getting any of these jobs means driver, big office, six stars hotel, overseas trips on taxpayers expense, makan out every night, bodyguard (or mistress if you like), and the usual "thank you" note in newspapers for coming to some dubious events.
Anyway, who am I to question the wisdom of the PM and the new administration about the number needed to rule this country.
Since we have so many problems, we may need the brainpower of all 69 to solve all the issues relating to ethnic politics, free but not fair elections, constitutional crisis in Perak, poverty, dayakism, corruption, incompetent civil service, religious extremism, racial discrimination, local councils mafia, dropping standards of education, lousy universalities, environmental degradation, dengue, drop in exports, drop in ringgit value, world financial meltdown, etc.
See what I mean, we need all the brain power we can muster! With about 30 ministers, all these issues will be taken care of in the most intelligent way.
To be sure, let's do a simple comparison (all information given below comes from the internet, so please don't attack me if there is a slight mistake! Also the numbers changed when governments change so the list here is the latest cabinet).
Of course judging by the numbers alone is not really fair since every country is so different.
However, we can still make comparisons since we can see which country is top-heavy in terms of ministerial positions. Japan with a population of more than 4 times of Malaysia only has 14 cabinet members.
Australia, the favourite real estate destination of Malaysia's political elite, and with a slightly smaller population but an area four times ours, has only 20 cabinet members.
Even Philippines and Thailand, both countries we Malaysians tend to look down since they are less developed, have smaller cabinets.
India, which has more than a billion people, only requires the same number of cabinet members as Malaysia. No wonder India is in a mess, they should expand their cabinet to at least 300 members.
In any case, serious reforms of the Malaysian cabinet are simply not possible under the present setup.
There are 13 parties in the BN and if we assume that every party leader must have a seat on the top table, and then the minimum size of the cabinet is 14 (PM's position is not counted as part of the 13).
In the Malaysian cultural context, one is never enough so assuming that each party must be given at least 2, this means the minimum cabinet size in Malaysia is about 27. See what I mean? (Of course you will argue that MIC only has one minister but this is because the MIC chap gave up the other cabinet position for two deputy ministers post.
It also means there is only one MIC boss with access to the cabinet- see how naughty MIC politics is?)
Hence, Najib's options are really limited. Yes, he should have gone for the minimum and try a cabinet size of 14 but this will also mean that he will have a lot of unhappy BN people running around trying to "kacau" him.
To mitigate this, he has expanded the number of deputy posts, and other posts, to keep these people happy.
At the end of the day, the size does matters. Having too many ministers since the coordination is much harder to work out, not to mention the tuft battles in cabinet.
I'll rather see a small cabinet of competent people rather than a large cabinet of politicians who are using the cabinet to further their careers.
I know this is asking for too much in the Malaysian context but we are all entitled to dream. In the meantime, at least you know your tax money is well spent on keeping some people happy!
