By Kee Thuan Chye
Malaysian Digest
10 March 2012

Najib Razak has just committed another major flip-flop, showing once again that he is the most indecisive prime minister we have had so far.

He has cancelled the proposed revamp of the civil servants’ remuneration scheme and reverted to the old one, the Malaysian Remuneration System (SSM). So much for all his talk about reform.

The now-scrapped Public Service New Remuneration Scheme (SBPA) was mooted to reward civil servants with a pay rise but, more importantly, to keep them on their toes. Its key aim was to transform the civil service into an efficient, productive, competitive and high-performing entity. It was part of Najib’s transformation plans aimed at making Malaysia a high-income nation.

There was to be evaluation of the work of civil servants, and those who did not perform were to have faced the possibility of dismissal – under the SBPA’s Exit Policy. It would have helped to weed the chaff from the grain, to get rid of deadwood. And aptly too, since the civil service is bloated – with 1.4 million employees.

But the civil servants balked at this. They feared that their security of tenure, which they had become so pampered with, might be threatened.

Much more significant than that, those in the lower grades (up to Grade 54) were appalled to learn that under the new scheme, there would be a huge disparity between their salaries and those of the 2,600 officers in the higher grades – a disparity of more than 1,000%. In this case, their umbrage was justified.

Those in Grade 54 and below would receive increments of between 7% and 13%, while those in the upper levels, from Superscale C and above, would reportedly get increments of at least RM5,000.

It was also reported that some employees in the lower levels would be getting a pay rise of as little as RM1.70, whereas the Chief Secretary to the Government would have his salary upgraded to RM60,000 a month, and Staff Grade officers would end up getting about RM36,000 a month.

Naturally, a crisis arose from this. What was meant to be a boon for the civil servants turned out to be a bane for the Government.

The implementation of the SBPA, which was originally scheduled for Jan 1, had to be postponed. A task force was set up to resolve the matter. Representatives from the Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) were invited to thrash it out with the Public Service Department.

Najib gave the task force three months to do what was needed. Towards the end of January, Cuepacs President Omar Osman threatened to pull out if three other Cuepacs officers were not appointed to the task force. On Feb 5, the Government acceded to his demand.

Then suddenly, on March 8, way before the three months was up, Najib announced that the SBPA would be scrapped.

Suddenly, Najib says, “this decision would be the best solution for the benefit of the entire civil service”. For the civil service, perhaps. But what about for the nation? What happened to his “transformation” plan to make the civil service more efficient, productive, competitive and high-performing – to meet the challenges of a dreamed-of high-income nation?

What he now says stinks of politicalspeak. And what he’s done appears to be a politically expedient move. The obvious indication is, he wants to call for the general election soon and he needs to ensure that the civil servants are happy, because they form a big and important segment of the voters. He wants the issue resolved earlier than the allotted time so that the civil servants can get their new salaries and arrears just before they go to the polling stations. Otherwise, why would he be in such a hurry to scrap the SBPA?

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin may deny that the decision was not made in connection with the general election, and he may deny that the scrapping of the SBPA amounted to a failure in policy implementation, but would we have expected him to say otherwise?

How can it not be a failure in policy implementation when the time allotted for the issue to be ironed out was not honoured? In other words, the policy was not given a chance.

Muhyiddin acknowledges that it was gradually discovered that the SBPA did not meet the pay rise and perks demands of the civil servants and therefore it had to be scrapped. Is he therefore admitting that the policy was faulty to begin with? If so, who is to be held responsible for not foreseeing the policy’s shortcomings if not the Government? Why did the Government issue a new scheme without thinking it through?

Another interesting question – is the new scheme meant to merely meet the demands of the civil servants, or is it to meet the needs of the nation?

And what is it ultimately – a faulty policy or a failure in implementation?

Whatever it is, this has to be the umpteenth flip-flop since Najib became Prime Minister. And it clearly shows that the Government is not steadfast on its policy decisions.

Any attempt to make the Government look good as a result of this cannot be convincing. Deputy Higher Education Minister Saifuddin Abdullah says the SBPA turnabout showed that the Government listened to the people. It somehow sounds like a joke – or, worse, a lie.

How could the Government be listening to the people when in the first place, it caused so much disgruntlement by issuing the SBPA?

One would like to think that Saifuddin had more integrity than to spin something like that, but when the general election is near, politicalspeak rules the day.

Perhaps the whole shebang was engineered such that Najib could come riding in like a knight and call the whole thing off – so it would look like he saved the day. That he was the saviour of the civil servants. So that his ratings would go higher. And the votes would pour in for Barisan Nasional.

But the people who would perceive him as the saviour of the situation would have to be people who are not well-informed or those who cannot think for themselves. To put it bluntly, they would have to be simple minds. And perhaps there are more simple minds in Malaysia than thinking ones – and the Government knows this to be a fact – so this strategy could work very well to Najib’s advantage.

But to those who can see through it, he is just another wishy-washy leader. So much for all his talk about “transformation”. So much for “People First, Performance Now”. The Prime Minster himself cannot even perform what he set out to do. He had neither the guts nor the political will.

At this rate, how will Malaysia ever move forward?

* Kee Thuan Chye is the author of the newly published book No More Bullshit, Please, We’re All Malaysians.