Same job, different capacity

It only shows that Anwar wants her in his government — specifically in economic and financial matters — at any cost. The issue of her capability, or lack thereof, is of little concern.

Yeoh Guan Jin, Free Malaysia Today

The news came late on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

First daughter Nurul Izzah Anwar will no longer be the finance and economic adviser to the prime minister.

Perhaps the unrelenting objections to her appointment has finally made her realise that it is better to step away from a role handed to her on a silver platter.

Questions have also been raised about her qualification for the job and these have yet to be properly answered.

But then again, it is not all as it seems. Nurul Izzah will continue to have a role in dishing out advice on the nation’s money matters for the benefit of the people.

But this time she will be doing it in a new capacity.

Hassan Marican, as head of the recently formed committee that will advise her father Anwar Ibrahim in his other role as finance minister, has “invited” her to be the co-chair of its secretariat.

And she has graciously accepted.

She will be sitting together with some of the nation’s great minds on economic matters and most prominent names in business, such as economists Yeah Kim Leng and Raja Rasiah, as well as corporate bigwigs FVSB executive chairman Ahmad Fuad Ali and Sarawak Energy Bhd chairman Abdul Hamed Sepawi.

There is no detail yet on the nature of her new responsibility.

Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine Nurul Izzah working with her team taking down minutes of each advisory committee meeting and then making copies for distribution to every member of the panel.

The way it looks, she will most certainly still have a major role to play in shaping the nation’s fortunes going forward.

She will just be doing it in a new office at the finance ministry rather than at the Prime Minister’s Office.

But major or minor her new role will be, there is little chance that opposition against her new appointment will be any less brutal.

In fact, giving her a new job in an attempt to appease the critics may not cut it for most.

It only shows that Anwar wants her in his government — specifically in economic and financial matters — at any cost. The issue of her capability, or lack thereof, is of little concern.

Perhaps Hassan Merican could explain why she has now been picked for the new job.