On DAP, the civil service and reforms
Is Ramasamy’s statement any different from all of the statements by DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang during the bad old days when Barisan Nasional had complete power?
Kua Kia Song, MalaysiaNow
DAP seems to have lost the plot regarding reforms in Malaysia. Its deputy chief minister in Penang, P Ramasamy, said our civil service needs reforms, especially in terms of its ethnic composition. After an outcry from DAP’s partners in the coalition government, the DAP secretary-general did not back him but tried to placate his partners in the government by saying he would deal with Ramasamy the “DAP way”.
This is all reminiscent of the bad old days when the role of trying to justify the racial discrimination in the administration was played by MCA and Gerakan, and DAP, especially its secretary-general, would flay them relentlessly. The refrain at the time was that MCA and Gerakan had lost their gall just because they had been rewarded with ministerships.
So the roles have changed, but what is the country left with? Is DAP no longer committed to reforming the Malaysian civil service? Is Ramasamy’s statement any different from all of the statements by DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang during the bad old days when Barisan Nasional had complete power?
Even Noor Farida Ariffin, a spokesman for the G25 group of former senior civil servants, has come out to say that low salaries are not the only factor discouraging the Chinese community in Sabah, Sarawak, and the peninsula from joining the civil service: “The main reason other races are not keen to join the civil service is the lack of opportunities for advancement and the discrimination most of them face.”
She said this was evident from the many instances where capable non-Bumiputeras were passed over for promotion by “less capable and non-performing Bumiputeras”.
World Bank Report on Malaysia’s civil service, 2019
A World Bank report in 2019 highlighted the fact that the performance of Malaysia’s civil service had been declining since 2014:
“If you look at the indicator for government effectiveness, Malaysia is still above in the region but in 2018, the performance is below that of between 1991 and 2014… If you take the average of that period between 1991 and 2014, it was higher than that in 2018, which means the performance is declining.”
There were also some indicators in which Malaysia ranked even below regionally, including accountability, impartiality, and the openness of its public sector.
“There is a strong perception… that recruitment of the civil service is not fair and neutral (with) Malaysia scoring very poorly on the indicators for impartiality in the government… It’s the lowest ranked, even below the region and way below the OECD,” the report said.
