Revisiting meritocracy without fear or favour

Clarence Devadass Clarence Devadass Updated 5 years ago · Published on 9 Jul 2018 7:00AM · 5 Comments

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad (right) and Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail during a press conference on Friday. Pakatan Harapan must start appointing people to positions of power based on meritocracy or risk repeating the same mistakes of the old regime. – The Malaysian Insight pic by Kamal Ariffin, July 9, 2018.

IN the months leading to GE14, the rakyat became accustomed to hearing the word “kleptocracy”.

It is not a word that many people have heard being used in Malaysia before and some friends were even not ashamed to admit that they had to look up the dictionary to find out its meaning.

Though the euphoria of GE14 is slowly settling down and those associated to the kleptocratic practices are now being brought before the law, there is another word that perhaps we need to revisit in this Malaysia 2.0 and that is “meritocracy”.

In the old Malaysia, this word would have brought out the ugly side of some political parties and even people who have been brainwashed to think that equal footing for all would mean the loss of privileges.

When speaking about succeeding in Malaysia, people would say things like “it is not what you know but who you know”, “it is not enough to have the right credentials but to have the right skin colour” and even “it’s not qualification that brings success but kulit-fication”.

Such comments may sound trivial to some, but they seem to carry an underlying truth about how things are (were?) done in Malaysia.

If Malaysia is to become great again, we need to have the right people in the right places, people who can fit the shoe and not otherwise.

The Pakatan Harapan (PH) government started the ball rolling by relooking all political appointees and cleverly arm-twisting them to step down, but when it came to their own backyard, the ugly side of the old Malaysia seems to have showed itself once again.

The delay in appointing cabinet members was put down to political parties in the PH coalition jostling for places and trying to come to an amicable solution, similar to what the BN government had been doing all this while

PH had a great opportunity to set us not only on the right track but also with a new mentality. However, it succumbed to the old ways.

When the cabinet members were announced, the nasty claws were out and analysts being analysts, broke them down based on party allocation and some even by race.

What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in once again. Perhaps this is part of the necessary evil when we have a coalition government or perhaps a change like this would have been too much for the old guards to handle in this short time.

Putting the right people, with the right credentials and in the right places, irrespective of party allegiance or race association, is what will put Malaysia back on the right track.

In the words of Steve Jobs, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

We need “smart people” who can do things that they are best at and for this to happen, we probably need a new generation – a generation that will work hard and not be spoon fed with success.

It is going to take a while to “create” this generation and the challenge is even greater when we have goons out there who will kick up a fuss when people in authority try to appoint key personnel based on merit or even attempt to communicate in a language other than Bahasa Malaysia.

Some Umno leaders who gathered outside the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission office on the night when our former prime minister was detained attempted to communicate in English when interviewed. They said it was for the benefit of foreign media.

However, when Attorney-General Tommy Thomas tried to speak in English at a recent press conference, he was drowned out by some of the same people who demanded that he spoke in Bahasa Malaysia. What hypocrisy!

Creating a Malaysia 2.0 is surely not going to happen in the first 100 days and perhaps not even in the next five years. There is a long road ahead of us and the reforms that are taking place now are only the beginning and we need a right beginning.

Some people describe Malaysia as a county with “first class infrastructure but third class mentality”. The time is right for us to rise above the challenges and behave with “first class mentality”. – July 9, 2018.

* The views in the articles published here do not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight.

* Dr Clarence Devadass is a Catholic priest and director of the Catholic Research Centre in Kuala Lumpur. Moral education is an issue close to his heart. He focuses on paving resourceful ways to promote virtues for living in a multireligious society, for a significant life together.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.

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Comments

  • Time to look beyond colours, race, culture & etc...or risk being left behind ...then same old same old stories...to succeed the PH government need to have the political will 5o change for Malaysia & Malaysian...if not the least that they must do is to implement meritocracy when allocating or trying to redistribute the economic pie in such a way that the disenfranchise but qualified Malays get the lion shares & to reappoint Malay to allotted position strictly base on merit & qualification as well as experience...If not at least put in place all the institutional reforms that have a strong check & balance to minimise abuses in the government

    Posted 5 years ago by Gee Lian · Reply

    • Giving the nation's resources to deserving malays is absolutely fine, but remember that they also claim that the malays are victims of the minorities! Take the case of vernacular schools and more recently, UEC. I cannot fathom the reasons behind claims that Chinese and Indian languages are an impediment to an united nation. Mind boggling!

      Posted 5 years ago by Raks Aksa · Reply

  • Like how it was in the many years gone by, before the "rot" set in to usher in mediocrity which pushed Malaysia downhill?..

    Posted 5 years ago by MELVILLE JAYATHISSA · Reply

  • New Malaysia will only have Malays only as h ad of departments, Branches, companies and ministries. All must be Muslim Malays because this is what meritocracy is all about. Only Malays have merits. The Chinese and Indians can always find work as advisors to the Malays at 1/20 the pay of a Malay salary and they are happy with working at those salaries just like Malaysians are happy with slow internet speeds.
    So we give the Chinese and Indians what they want and We Malays always get what we what do everyone is happy. Case close. Dont change if it is not broken.

    Posted 5 years ago by Steve Kok · Reply

  • No way meritocracy is gonna happen lah. Think about it: There are three main ingredients to a great nation, Robespierre's "LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY", and added to it "JUSTICE". PH is more worried about "justice", which (hopefully) isn't "vengeance". The main ingredients sudah tak ada. Sudah lupa. Muslim countries almost always DO NOT offer equality to it's non muslim citizens. There isn't a single one that does in fact. I don't think Malaysia is going to be the first anyway. So "equality" is gone. Next "liberty", which is so much dependent on "equality", because if you can't offer equality, that would only mean suppression of a section of the society. So that one also gone! If both "liberty" and "equality" tak ada, no more "fraternity", the brotherhood that makes us a country. To me personally, fraternity is the key to it all. It is like a family; if there is too much favoritism in a family by the parents, the ties that bind the family tend to be fractious. It's just not about a single race hogging all the resources, but also about that race claiming to be victims of the minority!

    Posted 5 years ago by Raks Aksa · Reply