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local universities were unable to secure employment, the government quietly absorbed many of them into the civil service. This move was spearheaded by UMNO as almost all these graduates were ethnic Malays, UMNO’s core constituency. The logic was simple but flawed; since UMNO created the quota system that allowed these Malays to enter universities and get a degree, it was UMNO’s duty to get them jobs as well. Many of these graduates lacked basic skills, and many argue that they should never have been admitted to university, but were politically important to UMNO, thus the civil service had to meet UMNO’s political demands.15
7.6.4 Increasing Islamization of the Civil Service
UMNO’s key political opponent is Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS). As the name suggest, PAS sees itself as the only “true” Islamic party and vows to create a theocratic Islamic state when it gets into power. It often accused UMNO of being a secular party and UMNO leaders of leading a “kafir” (unbelievers) government. This is the greatest insult to a Malay in Malaysia. Thus, when Mahathir came to power in 1981, he decided that to outflank PAS politically, he had to be seen as being more “Islamic” than PAS. He undertook two significant things that changed the character of the civil service to boost his Islamic credentials. First, he greatly expanded the Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM or Department of Islamic Development). JAKIM comes directly under the Prime Minister’s Office. Today, there is a JAKIM office in every state. Second, he instilled the “Islamic Values in Administration” policy, which was supposed to make the civil service more efficient, of higher quality, and more competitive. However, in practice, this policy of Islamization meant that the civil service devoted a huge amount of time and valuable resources to Islamic programs. Heads of departments had to organize, and often lead, religious functions outside office hours. Many of these functions used resources from the civil service. It also meant that it was much harder for a non-Muslim (hence non-Malay) to enter the upper echelons of the civil service since they cannot take part in these religious activities. It did not matter that more than one-third of the Malaysian population was non-Muslim.
7.7 Ethnic Politics and Reforms
The single biggest issue facing Malaysia since independence is ethnic politics. In Malaysia, political parties are centered around one particular ethnic group. Even political parties that profess a multi-racial approach, end up championing ethnic issues. The issue of ethnicity permeates every level of society. The situation was made worse after 1970 when the NEP formalized ethnic divisions into two categories: bumiputeras and non-bumiputeras. Being classified a bumiputera brings benefits such as access to scholarships, jobs in the civil service, scholarships, easy loans for business and state aid, while the reverse is true if one is classified as non-bumiputera. By attaching benefits to one ethnic group, which incidentally is also the ethnic group (read Malay) that holds political power, this creates a sense of alienation and “second class” syndrome among the non-Malays.
15All government-linked companies (GLCs) or state-owned enterprises (SOE), likewise, were pressured by UMNO to offer employment to these unemployed Malay graduates. The Star, July 12, 2006, reported that “The Public Services Department (PSD) and Public Services Commission have been urged to speed up the recruitment of graduates…. Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said that this would overcome the problem of unemployed graduates.” See also 60,000 Malaysian graduates unemployed, New Straits Times, November 10, 2005.
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It reinforced the UMNO notion of ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) and created a political atmosphere that left little room for negotiation [40].
The civil service reflects this reality. UMNO’s omnipresence has caused the civil service to be almost an exclusive Malay enclave. The non-Malays feel alienated from it. As a consequence, they see the entire civil service as a bureaucracy that serves the needs of the Malay and bumiputera community. Even if the government was to actively encourage non-Malays to join the bureaucracy, it would most likely be unsuccessful as non-Malays are afraid of being marginalized within the service. These are well-founded fears as the figures clearly show that the upper echelon, the PTD, is overwhelmingly Malay with the quota system to protect any meaningful changes. In other words, why would a non-Malay sign on to a career with almost no prospect of reaching the top?
Political will, or to be exact, political will within UMNO is the key to making the Malaysian civil service more transparent and representative. UMNO’s lack of will thus far can easily be explained by its openly stated goals of Malay dominance [41]. If it opens up the civil service, there is a real fear that it may lose support among its core constituent, the Malays. Given the highly ethicized political climate, this could easily happen.
Although the government, from time to time, laments the lack of non-Malays in the civil service and calls for a greater intake of non-Malays into the bureaucracy, in reality this would be hard to do. It will face resistance from the existing bureaucrats. The most sensible proposal thus far is a gradual intake of non-Malays, over a 20-year period, to correct the imbalance. By setting a quota in favor of non-Malays every year, over a 20-year period the civil service will be more representative of the society it serves. The proposal, submitted to the government in 2007, did not get a reply from the government.16
Civil society groups that call for reform are also caught in this ethnic dilemma. While there is widespread support from all ethnic groups for reforms of the civil service to make it more transparent and accountable, the support dips among the Malay community when the reforms include opening up the civil service to non-Malays. The Malay community, which constitutes the majority in the country, sees the civil service as one of its traditional sources of political power, employment, state aid, and government help. It will probably not want to give up any of these benefits.
7.8 Conclusion
With UMNO dominating all levels of the political system, Malaysia is often called a semi-democracy or soft authoritarian state. The issue of ethnicity permeates every level of society, including the Malaysian civil service, where Malays dominate. UMNO dominates the Malaysian state, and the civil service, as one of the principle organs of the state, is securely under the control of UMNO. Any reforms and changes to the civil service require the sanction of the UMNO leadership. The civil service is the key implementer of UMNO’s policies and a major source of UMNO’s power. In this sense, the old mantra that civil servants must be loyal to the government in power is alive and well in modern Malaysia. Malaysia has a strong central government, and in recent decades, the civil service has been greatly shaped by Prime Minister Mahathir (1981–2003), who strengthened control over the entire civil service by the Prime Minister’s Office. He did this through secrecy, the expansion of the bureaucracy in the Prime Minister’s Office, appointing only UMNO-supporting bureaucrats to the upper echelons of the service, as well as economic policy making, which has been centralized in the Prime Minister’s Office. The end result was a highly politicized civil service where
16Th e proposal called Towards a More Representative and World Class Malaysian Civil Service, was submitted by the Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS), a private think-tank organization.
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high-level corruption was left unchecked for political reasons. The Islamization of the civil service also meant that the civil service took on a more religious character.
When the British left Malaya in 1957, they left a civil service that was, for the most part, modeled on the British service where political neutrality was one of the core administrative values. The top Malayan civil servants, almost all Malays from aristocratic backgrounds, saw themselves as above partisan politics. This legacy was largely intact for the first decade, but fell apart after the watershed 1969 ethnic riots. The creation of a Malay nation based on Ketuanan Melayu and UMNO dominance meant that neutrality was seen as a hindrance to the development of a modern Malay state. In the 1980s, an infusion of Islamic values into the entire civil service further removed any colonial British values in the civil service.
The British legacy of generally excluding the Chinese and Indians from the civil service, especially its top posts, remains to this day, although for different reasons. The exclusion of nonMalays from the civil service since independence is to Ketuanan Melayu.
Today, the only legacies of the colonial civil service found in the contemporary Malaysian civil service are the titles and structure. The administrative head of a ministry is called a secretary-general (Ketua Setiausaha), while head of the civil service is called chief secretary to the government (Ketua Setiausaha Negara). Structures of ministries, other than their names, have changed little since colonial times. As this chapter argued, political neutrality is no longer a feature of the Malaysian civil service. Political loyalty is now the cornerstone value in the upper echelons of the civil service.
In sum, real reforms of the Malaysian civil service are impossible as long as UMNO is in power. Reforms that do not threaten the hold of UMNO over the civil service are acceptable, but making the civil service more professional and non-partisan will not be acceptable. The politization of the civil service is so pervasive that one could argue that the whole civil service, especially the top echelon, is effectively a branch of the UMNO party.
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