Is it time to change your government?

As promised in my last article, let’s objectively look at what constitutes good governance of a country and then evaluate our previous (now the caretaker) government performance in terms of these characteristics.

There is an extremely important pre-requisite to having a good government before any of the following characteristics can even be considered. There must be a true separation of powers where the government, judiciary and legislation are independent and free from interference. Without this true separation of powers, good governance is but a dream.

The foremost important characteristic of good governance is involvement and participation of the people in the country. This is done ideally through direct election of people representatives (as in many democratic countries) or less ideally through appointment of people who represent some ethnic or social-political groups (as in some countries that still practise monarchy system). The bottom line is, everyone is given equal right to participate in the government or represented by people they choose. As such, a fair and clean election system is essential.

Rule of law is the second most important feature of good governance. It is imperative to have fair and just laws that are enforced impartially on everyone, including those who walk the corridor of power.

The third most important quality in good governance is to promote, observe and implement equity in all government policies. This feature ensures everyone in the country is treated equally and free from any form of discriminations due to difference in skin colour, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation and political affiliation.

Next, we have the C.A.T, competency, accountability and transparency in governance. A competent government is effective in carrying out its duties as well as efficient in managing the available resources of the country. A good government will have systems in place to make sure members of the government are accountable to the people in the country while performing their duties. Information on government processes, utilisation of country resource, policies and laws etc must be freely available and accessible to anyone in the country who wants to know. This is called transparency of governance.

For example, an independent evaluation system is required to monitor the measurable performance of various operational branches of the government. The evaluation results must be made available and accessible to the people of the country.

Last but not least, a good government has positive visions and long term objectives in the development of the country.

In a nut shell, a good government has positive visions, and supports active participations of the people, implements rule of law and practises equity in its policies. It is competent, accountable and transparent in its operations.

Now, how many of the above qualities does our Malaysian government have? Is calling for a change of government justified in this coming 13^th general election?

    1.    Participation. We have a democratic system to elect the government. However, fair and clean election being an essential part to ensure equal right of participation is missing from the equation. So, I would say they failed this test.

     2.    Rule of law. We have a legal framework that is based on the common law. However, with the domination of the government over the judiciary, impartial application of rule of law is hardly seen in the country when it involved the powers that be. So, they failed this test.

     3.   Equity. With so many discriminatory and preferential policies such as the NEP, quota system etc, Malaysians are constantly being discriminated by their race, gender, religion and probably the choice of their pet. It’s definitely a fail.

    4.    C.A.T. When jet engines were smuggled out from a military based and sold in South America; when government departments procured everything at severely inflated prices; when armed militants entered the country and occupied a village but strangely nobody was accountable for it; when the MRT project costing billions of ringgit was awarded to a company without any track records, without an open tender process; what C.A.T are you talking about. Hence, it is another resounding failure.

     5.     Vision. You actually mean vision and long term development objectives? Hahaha. Please don’t make me laugh. From vision 2020, Islam Hadhari to 1Malaysia, our national vision changed whenever we have a new prime minister. We didn’t even have a national day slogan in 2012. They failed badly on this one as well.

The previous (now the caretaker) government of Malaysia has failed in all the tests that characterise good governance. Is changing government justified? You make your own judgement, my dear Malaysians.

Is the Malaysian society a successful one?

      In the midst of election faze when every man, woman and their pets are talking about politics and who they ought to vote, let’s take a step back and evaluate the current state of our society. In order to do this, we have to look at some essential characteristics of a society for it to be called a successful, developed and civilised one.

The top three most important requirements of a successful society are:

     1.       Safety. There must be means to safeguard personal safety of everyone. Nobody should live in fear of being hurt physically or being robbed of their belongings.

     2.   Shelter. Everyone should have at least a basic form of shelter for them to rest and keep their personal possessions. Shelters ought to be affordable to the average persons. For the unfortunate group of people, such as the less-abled folks, old and sick folks, orphans, mentally challenged etc, basic shelter should be provided in the forms of nursing homes or centres.

     3.  Food, clean water and clothes. Access to food, clean water and clothes is essential in any successful society. Again, the unfortunate group of people must not be deprived of these basic needs.

The other essential requirements are a good government, social justice, freedom, education and health care.

The role of a government is to administrate and manage the various operations of a society, with the aim of bringing benefits to the people in the society. These operations include security forces, education system, financial system etc. Since good governance is pivotal in the provision of the other essential requirements, it will be evaluated in more details in another article.

Social justice in itself is a big topic. It basically means everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities, regardless of his or her race, gender, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation and religious belief.

The freedom of everyone in the society must be guaranteed and at the same time check and balance must exists to safe guard it from being abused to violate others in the society. Freedom generally encompasses freedoms in: speech, movement, belief, sexual orientation, religion and political affiliation.

Equal right and access to basic education for everyone is essential in a successful society. At the same time, it must be affordable to the average people and provided to those who can’t afford it.

As in education, everyone in a successful society should have equal access to a health care system the society is afford to provide.

Now, let’s look at how we, the Malaysian society, fare in terms of these essential characteristics of a successful society.

      1.       Safety. In the face of climbing crime rate, I would say we don’t pass this test.

    2.       Shelter. Although squatters are abound in the fringes of the big cities, and the sorry state of many shelters in the rural areas, I would still say we pass this test but with a very low margin. Ballooning property price may have made a few people very wealthy, but the general public suffers greatly from it.

      3.       Food, clean water and clothes. I would say we pass this test with improvements required.Thousands in some remote areas are still deprived of clean, treated water.

     4.       Good governance. I would say we failed quite badly in this test. Details will be discussed in another article.

     5.       Social justice. We failed at this as well. So many fellow Malaysians are being discriminated due to their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and political affiliation.

     6.       Freedom. Do I need to say more on this? With so many laws to curb, illegalise and prosecute freedom of Malaysians to express, to demonstrate, to profess religious belief etc, we again fail badly in this test.

     7.       Education. If we don’t consider the quality of our education system and the products from it, I would say we are pretty good in providing affordable and accessible basic education to the people.

     8.       Health care. In my personal opinion, we have a good public health care system that is affordable and accessible to most of the people in Malaysia. More costly private health care services in the form of medical centres are also available to those who afford to pay more for speedier and customised services. However, my personal experience is the wait queue at some of the popular medical centres is the same, if not longer, than public hospital. More importantly, the qualities of professional medical services (i.e. specialist advice, consultation etc) are no better than what is provided by the doctors in public hospitals. I guess, time is money for the specialists in private practice. If you don’t agree to major, costly treatments or operations, spending more time on you is equivalent to spending less time on those genuine, paying big bucks patients.

 I have summarised our report card in the following table. I have to admit this article is written within a short time and they represent my personal, subjective opinions on the subjects discussed. Ideally sufficient research has to be done to back up the claims, which I didn’t. Hence, make your own judgements.

	Requirement	Result
1	Safety	Failed.
2	Shelter	Just passed.
3	Food, clean water and clothes	Passed.
4	Good government	Failed badly.
5	Social justice	Failed.
6	Freedom	Failed badly.
7	Education	Passed.
8	Health care	Passed.