DURING a fundraising dinner for the upcoming general election, Damansara MP Tony Pua told the crowd emphatically that the incompetence of cabinet ministers is due to the fact that smart people in this country tend to avoid politics.

And the logic is pretty simple according to the former special officer to the finance minister – when smart people chose not to join politics, what is left in the political field are stupid people to govern our daily lives.

He even went as far as contributing the success of Pakatan Harapan (PH) in the last general election to the coalition’s ability to attract smart people into its fold.

Pua’s provocative statement may sound snobbish, and would no doubt annoy many who is from the government, but Pua did say it in the context of encouraging more people to join politics and he also did concede that several of PH’s previous ministers are not on par either, or “stupid”, as he has put it.

However, it also does raise a deeper question on how Malaysians wish to be governed and whether political meritocracy is suitable for countries with free election.

Are we better off with “smart” people governing the country? And what if the pursuit of the ideals of democracy has led Malaysians to consistently elect “stupid” politicians, ministers or government.

Having listened to Pua’s analogy, I recalled a conversation I had with my best friend in the fallout of the Sheraton Move, when newly appointed prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin was forming his maiden cabinet.

What my friend said afterwards was particularly striking and this is because while there are many common interests between us, the passion for governance and politics is not one of them, and he is the type to not care and has little understanding about what politicians can do for him. Therefore, our conversations nearly never touch on politics nor my line of work. 

I remember I was texting in a Whatsapp group said friend is in and complained about how the appointment of Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz as Muhyiddin’s finance minister is controversial and a wrong move. 

This is not just because Tengku Zafrul is a distant relative to the prime minister, which might be a potential conflict of interest within the cabinet, but most importantly, I sincerely believe the Finance Ministry is too important as a ministry to be governed by a person who is not an MP suddenly parachuted into the job through non-electoral means.

To my surprise, the friend who always remained aloof about national politics, replied in the group and said the appointment of Tengku Zafrul should be welcomed.

I remember he said he would always prefer a banker with a proven track record in the corporate sector rather than Malaysian politicians. 

It is particularly revealing to see my friend suddenly make a passing comment on this issue when he knows little about politics, and certainly, at that point in time, he would have thought that Tengku Zafrul is the “smart” person who chose to join politics.

Tengku Zafrul would certainly fit the bill of being among those smart people who join politics. Except that whatever Tengkul Zafrul has achieved so far excites nobody and he has also repeatedly invited criticism for his austere policies.

Skill transfer is apparently not applicable in this case if you make the switch from being chief executive officer of CIMB Bank to being chief financial officer of the Malaysian government.

He was also forced to kowtow to the Umno rank and file when he finally allowed for special Employees Provident Fund withdrawals, which is a policy he was initially against. The minister may have been successful in his banking career but has struggled given the vicissitudes of politics. 

Political meritocracy is broadly defined as an idea that a political system should aim to select and promote leaders with superior ability and virtue, and I suspect most Malaysians would find that ideology desirable even if we were to do away with elections to allow capable people to be fast-tracked into governance. 

However, if you are one of the many who felt that the current finance minister has not been doing a good job, then we may need to revise the view that the only cure for this country’s political problem is to encourage more smart people to take part in the political process.

I am not in any way discouraging people from being active in politics, but I am more concerned about how our political discourse always revolves around getting “smart” people or “technocrats” with their top-class degrees to join politics.

There is a difference between achieving high grades in university and when you are debating a policy in Parliament, because these two require two completely different skill sets.

While we believe smart people joining politics would be great for our politics, there is a likelihood that the intelligence and imagination of these people are limited by the unpleasant side of politics.

Perhaps the question we should start thinking about is fixing our political institutions and changing our discourse to where politicians are always accountable to the people, regardless of whether they are “smart” or “stupid”. – May 22, 2022.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.