By Emmanuel Samarathisa
ON Jan 2, Malaysians witnessed the first resignation of a minister under the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government. Maszlee Malik prematurely hung up his mantle as education minister and left in his wake a mixed bag of praise, ridicule and a petition urging him to stay on to complete his term.
That incident rattled the grapevine. The media immediately played musical chairs and picked out Tourism, Arts, and Culture Minister Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi, who brushed aside speculation that he was up for the cut.
“What I know is my performance is around 100% (of my KPI) but I don’t know if it’s something close to 100% is good or bad, that I do not know, it’s up to you to answer,” he quipped. “I am not worried. Why should I?” Mohamaddin told reporters the day after Maszlee’s resignation.
Indeed, he can take it easy: the power to hire and fire a minister lies in the hands of Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. And therein lies the first of many problems PH is facing in taming Putrajaya, the federal administrative capital – the prime minister’s powers, both soft and constitutional, are enormous.
Returning the post
Maszlee’s resignation is a good place to start. But he has been tight-lipped over the matter. His swansong speech was typical officialese albeit with a perplexing conclusion: “On the advice of the prime minister, and on the basis of loyalty and discipline to the leadership of the party and the government, I, Maszlee Malik, return the post of Education Minister back to the prime minister effective Jan 3, 2020.”
“On the advice of the prime minister” is the phrase used in the Federal Constitution Article 43 (5) which states that: “Ministers other than the Prime Minister shall hold office during the pleasure of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, unless the appointment of any Minister shall have been revoked by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong on the advice of the Prime Minister but any Minister may resign his office.”
But Maszlee also described his quitting as “returning” the education minister role to Mahathir, implying that the portfolio was never his, to begin with. To be sure, Mahathir has had ambitions to be education minister. He tried pulling that stunt of taking on a second ministerial portfolio, that of education, on May 18 last year when he announced the Cabinet line-up. “I took over the education portfolio because I think so many people are uneducated in this country,” he said in jest that day. “I thought I would give my attention to that… we should devise new ways of teaching.”
But Malaysians did not want to have anything of that and criticised the Mahathir government for seemingly expanding the prime minister’s powers. Mahathir would then pass the baton to Maszlee who has now “returned” the portfolio to his boss.
Maszlee would later tell The Star that he acted upon Mahathir’s “fatherly advice”, side-stepping questions as to the real reasons for his resignation.
“I met Mahathir at his office, and he gave me a bit of fatherly advice saying that I had done a wonderful job in my 20 months as education minister. But I admit that I am not a politician and never lobbied for a position in Mahathir’s cabinet,” he told the English-language daily on Jan 5.
But thanks to news portal The Malaysian Insight (TMI), Maszlee and the Cabinet’s intentions are now under scrutiny.
Sighting a letter, TMI reported on Jan 5 that Maszlee was fired for failing to comply with Cabinet matters. A letter was delivered to Maszlee on Dec 27 last year but he and his family were holidaying in the US at that time.
The portal further claimed that the letter, a “17-paragraph missive”, stated that Maszlee failed to follow the Cabinet’s directive on the teaching of Jawi in schools, free internet service for schools and the free breakfast programme for pupils. Maszlee has, however, denied that he had been fired or forced to quit.
If this chain of events is true, there needs to be an overhaul in the way ministers are accountable to the public. Aside from your voluntary resignation, which is still an abnormal phenomenon, how a minister is fired or forced to quit Cabinet has to be done more transparently.
While the prime minister is constitutionally the person to decide who to appoint and drop, this could lead to an abuse of power. A minister can be told to vacate because he is seen as a threat or not as a contributing member of the Cabinet. Or even worse, a non-performing minister can finish his or her term and go on to retire with a princely pension.
Freedom of information
PH has broached the idea of limiting a prime minister’s rule to two terms. On Dec 3, a bill to curtail the prime minister’s tenure was tabled and debates are set to take place in Parliament sometime in March.
While that is a step in the right direction, the bill would only address the structural aspects of power in Putrajaya.
We need more. And to achieve that, the Cabinet meeting minutes have to be made public. Currently, these are under the Official Secrets Act 1972 (OSA). It is understandable that some matters can be sensitive such as those involving national security.
But in cases where a minister’s performance is up for discussion or matters like the sale of the country’s largest highway operator PLUS Malaysia Bhd, then there is no reason Malaysians should be left in the dark.
Also, we need to know whether ministers duly play their role as Cabinet members, meaning contributing to meetings, but more importantly, attending them. They are already struggling to attend Parliament, which is a given, hence why they have deputies. But a no-show at Cabinet meetings is something even more serious.
The minutes also shed light on more pressing matters. To put things in perspective, we have in our Cabinet, a minister who not only rocked the share price of airline operator Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd but also dismantled an important aviation regulator. We have a minister whose primary obsession is a flying car or drone where he is willing go to the Maldives on taxpayers’ money to give that thingamajig the test run. We also have a minister who supposedly oversees the economic affairs of the country but can’t seem to manage his own affairs ie paying for his and his family’s personal travel expenses.
There are deals such as PLUS, the East Coast Rail Link and other mega projects that had been and still are up for discussion and the minutes will help the public make sense of the goings-on, and also to raise questions and criticism where necessary. We are, after all, the ultimate stakeholders, even though prevailing attitudes only point to us being important during election season.
Now, the Mahathir government has promised to replace the OSA with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) this year. “The bill is expected to be tabled in Parliament in the middle of 2020,” Mahathir said in July last year.
What shape the bill will take is anyone’s guess. But I’m not going to count on that being a game-changer. However, an effective FOIA can help be a tremendous counterbalance to the prime minister’s powers.
After all, declassifying the Cabinet minutes also show us the prime minister’s attitude and stance towards all the problems discussed, whether it’s Maszlee’s performance or on topics of greater public interest like the sale of PLUS.
But then, the government, in general, is a political beast, and in politics, self-preservation is key. An FOIA runs counter to that belief.
In the meantime, regardless of how Malaysians react, they can’t do anything to stop the inevitable – Mahathir is “interim” education minister in addition to interim prime minister.
