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In 1993, Mahathir initiated another major step when he created the Client’s Charter (CC) for the civil service. The focus was on quality public service and public satisfaction. Mahathir believed in “Malaysian Inc.” and saw the role of the civil service as enabling the private sector to flourish. The underlying philosophy is that both the private and public sectors should work together and share information and responsibility to upgrade the social, administrative, and economic development of the country. Public servants should see Malaysia as a “company” or “corporate nation” with both the private and public sectors holding equity. Mahathir was a man in a hurry, he made it clear to everyone that he wanted Malaysia to be a fully industrialized modern state by the year 2020. He even provided the blueprint and coined the infamous “Vision 2020” to prod the nation.9

With such an ambitious agenda, it was not surprising that Mahathir centralized power in the civil service through his office to serve his agenda effectively. All major initiatives and projects were directed through the prime minister’s department. The creation of hundreds of GLCs added more power to the Prime Minister’s Office as many of these GLCs had to follow the “national agenda,” i.e., government’s policies. With more than a million civil servants and perhaps an equal number working for GLCs, the state’s control was extensive.

A bureaucratic culture of top-down decision-making process was reinforced during Mahathir’s term. There was no attempt at decentralization. In the wider political arena, Mahathir also centralized power in the hands of the prime minister. All political leaders, including those from his own party, UMNO, found it easier to go directly to him than through normal party channels and this pattern became a permanent feature.10

7.6 Administrative Values

7.6.1 Close Ties with the Political Party

Given the omnipresence of UMNO and the historical close relationship between UMNO and the civil service, many of UMNO’s core political ideology ended up as administrative values among key civil servants. It is still common for many senior UMNO politicians to be former civil servants. Four of the six Malaysian prime ministers (Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak, Tun Hussian Onn, and Tun Ahmad Abdullah Badawi) were all former civil servants. Even Malaysia’s longest serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, worked for a time as a government doctor. Although in the past decade, more businessmen have joined the senior ranks of UMNO, many of these businessmen started out as a civil servant or worked in one of the GLCs or state-owned enterprises (SOE). All these entities are controlled indirectly by UMNO though nominees. This makes issues like equity, democracy, accountability, relationship with the legislature, efficiency of government, and the role of government in society highly biased toward what UMNO leaders think, leading to one writer calling the Malaysian civil service “political bureaucracy [29].” This is often very apparent in ministries, such as the Ministry of Information, where the nexus between politics and the civil service can be clearly seen. The Ministry of Information is expected to present the views of the government, i.e., the UMNO/BN view, to the people and build support for that particular viewpoint. During election time, the whole government machinery, including civil servants, is expected to actively

9See Mahathir Mohamad’s speech “Malaysia: The Way Forward,” presented at the inaugural meeting of the Malaysian Business Council, February 28, 1991.

10For a description of how Mahathir defeated his internal UMNO opponents and centralized power in his office [26–28].

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support the government, often using government facilities for campaign purposes. In most developed countries, this would not be tolerated as the civil service is supposed to be politically neutral, but in Malaysia, this is the norm [30].

The easiest way to understand the Malaysian civil service is to view the top level of the PTD as a bureaucratic extension of the UMNO leadership. Both share not only the concept of Malay dominance, but also many other values and beliefs [31]. Those PTD officers who expect to reach the top posts of secretary-general of a ministry or the top prize, chief secretary to the government, must exhibit loyalty to UMNO behind the scenes. This makes public accountability extremely difficult [32]. While in the immediate post-independence years, the civil service was much more accountable, in the 1980s, under Mahathir, public accountability had a different meaning. A new ruling meant that all government documents, including general correspondence, were automatically classified as secret. This made any reporting on corruption and maladministration very difficult or even impossible. A newspaper journalist, for example, could not write a story about corruption since he cannot use official documents as evidence. In one famous case, two lawyers representing two journalists from the Asian Wall Street Journal (AWSJ) were arrested under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for “possession” of government documents. These documents were to be used as part of the journalists’ defense for an article related to corruption [33].

7.6.2 Laws that Promote Secrecy, Continuing Concerns with Corruption

The civil service is often the agency that selects and gives out government procurement contracts worth millions. Government tenders are often shrouded in secrecy and the successful bidder need not reveal any details of the price or any other information. Many of Malaysia’s multi-billion privatization projects are handled by the civil service. Civil servants prepare the paperwork under orders of their political masters who decide who got what [34].

At the lower level, corruption remains an issue. Although various programs were drawn up to tackle bureaucratic corruption (see separate chapter in this volume), such as reducing red tape, the general perception is that corruption is still widespread in the civil service. Transparency International (TI), which conducts surveys of corruption, called the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), ranked Malaysia 56 out of 180 countries in 2009. This ranking has not improved much over the years. In 2007, it was 43 out of 179 countries, in 2006 it was 44 out of 163 countries, and in 2005 it was 39 out of 158 countries.11 Although junior civil servants are regularly arrested and charged with corruption, few senior bureaucrats and even fewer senior politicians are charged with corruption. This has led the Malaysian opposition leader to ask why “larger fishes” get away [35].

Civil servants who leak government documents, such as tender documents, can be charged under the OSA, which can include jail time. It does not matter if the document shows no evidence of cor- ruption—the OSA was designed to stop all government documents from leaking into the public domain. Many could not help but suspect that the real aim of the OSA was not to protect government secrets, but to hide wrong doing [36]. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), successor to the ACA, established specifically to investigate graft in the civil service and government agencies, does not report to Parliament but to the prime minister. This makes investigations of bureaucratic corruption involving senior civil servants and senior politicians politically sensitive. Many critics claim that MACC is only interested in going after low-ranking civil servants who are of little political significance [37].

11All figures from Corruption Perception Index (CPI) conducted by Transparency International, http://www. transparency.org/ (accessed July 10, 2009).

©2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

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The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the main organ that Parliament uses to make sure there is no wastage or corruption in public funds, comprises members overwhelmingly from the BN. The PAC only deals with minor issues or issues with little political consequences. The works minister famously said he did not have time to appear before the PAC to answer questions. Ministries regularly ignore summons to appear before it.12 Despite the close relationship between UMNO and the civil service, parliamentarians from other non-Malay BN parties do criticize the civil service and bureaucrats in Parliament. More often than not, these complaints are due to frustrations when the civil service do not attend to their complaints or worse, ignore them completely. One reason may be that the civil service is more attentive to UMNO politicians than non-UMNO politicians. Since civil servants know where the real power lies (in UMNO), it makes sense that they attend to the member of Parliament from the most powerful party more diligently than others. Similar complaints have been heard from non-Malay ministers as well. One non-Malay minister famously remarked that bureaucrats in his ministry are not afraid of him, but are afraid of UMNO leaders!

The inability of Parliament to provide clear oversight of the civil service machinery is almost certainly due to the longevity of UMNO in power. One could almost argue that you cannot really tell the difference between the top layer of the civil service and the top layer of UMNO. Since independence the civil service has only known UMNO as their political master and UMNO has always relied on the civil service to implement the bulk of its agenda. This mutual dependence does not augur well for full transparency and accountability. In fact, transparency may be impossible under this arrangement.

A recent example of the bias in the civil service can be found in the Perak case. In March 2008, the state government of Perak changed from the BN to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Pact). Within a year, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) government fell when the BN engineered the defection of three PR legislators to the BN. Key civil servants played a fundamental role in the affair, including the chief secretary to the Perak State Government who, according to the PR Menteri Besar (chief minister), ignored the orders of the state executive council and actively worked against the PR government.13

7.6.3 Politics over Performance

Although significant reforms were undertaken to make the civil service more efficient, such as privatization, quality control circles, total quality management, effective counter service, CC, ISO90000 management systems, implementing a Code of Conduct, and annual appraisal systems (see other chapters in this volume), some of the efficiency gains were sometimes reversed by UMNO’s political priorities. A recent review of reforms and initiatives in the civil service from the 1980s to the present day suggests that the civil service still suffers from inefficiency, corruption, and a host of other problems [38].

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the government decided to trim the number of civil servants, numbering more than 1.2 million. For a country of 25 million people, this would be a sensible thing to do.14 Although there was wide support for this move in the public arena, the plan never really took off for political reasons. When it was revealed that thousands of graduates from

12New Straits Times, Heated exchange at PAC meeting, June 26, 2006.

13Pakatan loses suit against Perak State Secretary, The Malaysian Insider, November 13, 2009.

14For comparison, the size of the Malaysian civil service is three times larger on a per capita basis than Laos. Compared with Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the Malaysian civil service is overstaffed by more than 50% [39].

©2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC