Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Malaysiakini : COMMENT | The government is
contemplating a new scheme whereby appointments in the public service
will no longer be made under the permanent and pension schemes, but will
be replaced with a contractual scheme.
This was announced by
Public Service Department director-general Borhan Dolah. He said this is
aimed at reducing the burden of pensions, which is now reaching RM28
billion. He added that existing civil servants might be given the option
to switch to the new contractual scheme. However, soon
after that, the prime minister said no decision has been reached yet on
the matter, and it has not been discussed by the cabinet. Will we be
witnessing another of the new government’s familiar flip flops? If
the government is so keen to cut the burdensome pension bill, surely
they should start by doing away with the multiple pensions that
politicians get and restricting them to just one pension when they
retire from politics?
As it is, our grabby politicians who
monopolise federal and state parliaments, who double up as chief
ministers at the state level and still want to be federal
parliamentarians, who move from state to state to try their political
fortunes, etc., can claim multiple pensions from these multiple posts.
Thus,
if the government is keen to cut down on the national debt, shouldn’t
they start by restricting the right of politicians to just one pension
when they retire? The price of populism
The
prime minister has pointed out that the government’s pension bill has
also been burdened by the previous administration's 25 percent salary
increment for civil servants, which he said was done without considering
the government’s financial strength. The fact is,
Malaysia’s bloated civil service is the price we are paying for just
that sort of unbridled populism all these years since the New Economic
Policy in 1971 and especially just before general elections.
Najib Abdul Razak wasn’t the only prime minister who
indulged in this form of populism to fish for civil servants’ votes. It
goes back all the way to 1971 when the civil service began to be
expanded as a populist move to implement the Malay agenda'.
After
the launch of the NEP, the expanding state sector has provided civil
servants not only with opportunities for attractive salaries, 'perks',
but also scope for private accumulation in the many business
opportunities open to bumiputera. Thus, the proportion of Malays
in the administrative and managerial occupations rose from 24 percent in
1970 to 32 percent in 1980. According to the 1980 census, more than 80
percent of all government executive officers were Malays while
96 percent of Felda settlers were Malay. Malaysia’s
bureaucracy is one of the biggest in the world, with 1.7 million civil
servants to a population of 32 million, a ratio of 5.3 percent, compared
with Singapore’s ratio of 1.5 percent, and Hong Kong and Taiwan's 2.3
percent. We are spending more than RM41 billion a year to upkeep our
civil servants. While it is the growing trend of many
countries to reduce their civil service, the Prime Minister’s Department
in particular, has done the opposite. It has more than doubled
its number of civil servants from 21,000 to 43,554. To date, there are
ten ministers in the Prime Minister’s Department alone, on top of other
important agencies or governmental bodies that fall within the purview
of the department. The new Pakatan Harapan government has even
invented new posts, special advisers to the ministers, for their
unemployed politicians. Naked civil servants
The
original idea behind giving civil servants pensions was so that they
give impartial service to the nation and that they maintain that
integrity after they retire. Now, we see the ‘revolving door’
syndrome only too often. The offer of Prasarana chairperson for the
previous inspector-general of police so soon after he retired shows this
revolving door between the civil service and the corporate world.
This practice is inimical to good governance and breeds
corruption and non-accountability because of kickbacks and favours
rendered by civil and armed service personnel in the award of
contracts. There are examples aplenty especially in the energy and defence ministries in my two books, Questioning Arms Spending in Malaysia and Damned Dams and Noxious Nukes.
And is more than 95 percent Malay dominance of the civil service not sufficient ‘affirmative action’? The
gross disparity in the ethnic makeup of the civil service up to 31
March, 2011 was revealed in a reply to a parliamentary question in
August that year. The second-largest ethnic group in the country,
namely, the Chinese community made up less than two percent of the
government service employees. There is a gross underrepresentation of
the non-Malay communities and the East Malaysian indigenous communities
in the civil service at all levels. The large Malay
representation of a bloated administration serves the populist objective
of the Malay ruling class in charge of the state since it creates
race-based benefits to be given out to the Malays through the generous
benefit and welfare and economic programmes of the government. These
include government medical and health facilities for government
servants; favoured treatment including scholarships, admissions into
higher education programmes; pension schemes, discounted travel fares
for retired administration employees; discounted hotel charges in
government-run hotels, and so on. Recently, World Bank lead public sector specialist Rajni Bajpai noted in her report: “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,” she said, adding that the
government in its election manifesto had suggested setting up an Equal
Opportunities Commission to tackle discriminatory practices in both the
public and private sector. A striking case of racial
discrimination is seen in the total absence of any non-Bumiputera
vice-chancellors in any of the public universities. This was not the
case in the early years of Independence. This surely has
consequences not only for justice and civil rights of non-Malays, but
also for the pursuit of meritocracy in the civil service. The
sharp decline in the ethnic composition of the non-Malays in the civil
service perhaps reflects the conclusion in the World Bank report. This
surely has consequences for “accountability, impartiality and the
openness of its public sector.” Thus, the reform agenda
before the Harapan government is not just the question of “pensions or
contracts” for the civil service, but a wider question of confronting
and solving these issues, namely,
The hugely oversized bureaucracy and a drain on taxpayers’ contributions;
That the composition of and recruitment into the civil service is neither fair, neutral nor merit-based, and
That our civil servants, including directors-general, are underperforming.
