THE Pakatan Harapan government must ensure the public delivery system is back on track if it wishes to make long overdue changes, said University Malaya’s professor Edmund Terence Gomez.

The expert on Malaysian political economy said the new government led by Dr Mahathir Mohamad must still deal with the fundamental problem that had defeated all the previous prime ministers, which was the quality of the civil service.

“Even if this new government comes up with good policies, ultimately it will be the civil service to implement them. But we have already seen over the past 10 years, during Abdullah’s time and also during Najib’s time, we have seen the problems of the public delivery system and the capacity to deliver public policies.

“There is a big problem and that is something that Dr Mahathir must address as soon as possible,” he told Malaysia Decides at the GE14 forum, Miracle in May in Kuala Lumpur, yesterday night.

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was the fifth prime minister, serving from 2003 to 2009, when he made way for Najib Razak, who took office in April 2009 until he was booted out in last week’s polls.

Gomez said the PH government place competent people in senior leadership positions to tackle the structural problem.

“We have to remove the deadwood and bring in a new breed of more competent people into government. It’s the only way we can get policies to be well implemented

“There are some very good civil servants also but what I’m saying is, we do have a bureaucracy which is a bit too big.

“We have to find out who are the deadwood and what are the issues that are causing the problems in implementing policies, and then deal with the issues. That’s a lot of work,” he said.

BN won 78 out of 222 parliamentary seats in GE14, losing Putrajaya to the opposition after six decades of rule since independence. – May 15, 2018.