Qualified to do what?

What is a qualification? An academic degree or/and a wealth of experience that says one can get the job done.

I am prompted to consider this issue in response to PAS secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan’s assertion that MPs are qualified to head GLCs because they are MPs.

The logic defies my comprehension, so I must resort to my university training in logic, start from the bedrock basic, as in the first sentence above.

Speaking from a wealth of experience teaching in various universities and colleges, I quickly dismiss the necessary importance of a degree setting you on a charted career.

Two examples. I taught and directed three young women, the first students of the Faculty of Performing Arts in UiTM, Shah Alam, till their graduation. A couple of years later, I met a couple of them. My top student, A, a captivating actor, was running an employment agency with her boyfriend, bringing in Nepali labour.

Her naïve dream of stardom had crashed against the hard reality of the Malay entertainment industry’s insistence on physical beauty for lead roles. This meant two despairing years of futile auditions, a couple of chorus roles in musicals, a few walk-on roles in television dramas.

The other student, M, was working for the LHDN, the tax-grubbers. Go figure: a year of script-analysis, acting and performance, and wind up dealing with figures that must add up.

Takiyuddin Hassan’

Second example. The country’s previous education minister. Can’t argue about his academic qualification. But he had no grasp of the task (to put it very kindly). The ancient Chinese torture, the death of a thousand khats, ended with a red-marked report card and expulsion from school.

If a degree is no guarantee of qualification or competence, what do we say about those insecure MPs who got theirs with no mental sweat from degree mills?

The country’s MPs come from a wide range of professions. The experience they have in common is they became involved in party politics, worked their way up to a position where the party nominated them to be a candidate in the elections, and winning a majority of the votes.

So what qualities can an MP contribute to the board meeting? He doesn’t need to ingratiate himself anymore, the bowing and scraping is for everyone else. He doesn’t need to bother about the rakyat, the people he was a humble, indefatigable servant of during the election campaign. The rakyat are several stories down from his air-conditioned boardroom, out in the heat of the day, sweating out a livelihood.

The defence raised was that the MPs would be there to make decisions, the actual running of the GLCs still humming in the hands of managers and the finance departments.

Supplement an MPs income by paying him a lot of money just to say "Yes" or "No" to other people’s work? I suppose they are qualified to do that, but for the salary they are getting, could we get a bit more for our money?

Not to mention our track record of politicians managing GLCs – saddled with overpriced hotels and property all over the world, litres of red ink, the only evidence of investments disappearing into black holes.

Heck, we had the prime minister/finance minister helming 1MDB, and even if one were to believe his defence that he was clueless about the plundering of 1MDB, about the millions sluicing in and out of his bank accounts… (pause here for horse-laughs and snorts of derision from readers)… his blithe ignorance of billions disappearing under his watch (no pun intended to Pavilion Residences) is incompetence writ large.

A twist on this issue was provided by Human Resources Minister M Saravanan in his rationale for the appointment of Shahul Hameed Dawood as the new chief executive officer of the Human Resources Development Fund.

The minister does not refer to Shahul being one of the major supporters of divisive preacher Zakir Naik (photo) being in our midst, nor his qualification for the post, but refers to Shahul’s grandfather, SOK Ubaidullah Kadir Basha, one of the founders and the permanent chairperson of MIC. 

The appointment was in remembrance of his grandfather’s contribution to the country.

So now we have a dynastic honours system, not the sins of the fathers visited on the sons, but their good deeds honoured in subsequent generations.

Damn, my mind has become adapted to the swiftness of Google search, I immediately think the Razaks, father and son, the son now proud of being a comic meme, a joke on a kapchai, a defendant in court.

Not worth thinking about anymore. Hot afternoon, storm clouds gathering. A stillness before the storm.

In about a couple of years from now, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin (photo) will have to face the electorate with his coalition (assuming he survives a vote when Parliament is convened).

In these couple of years, he will have to helm a Malaysian economy that is inextricably linked to the global one, now wallowing low in economic depression. Even when lockdowns are lifted, the bills will still be coming in months later, earnings, production figures, companies folding.

He not only heads a small party, but also a divided one. Noise from Umno ranks about the lack of ministerial plums have been muzzled, but come election time and the allocation of seats, I don’t expect Umno and PAS to be quiet, acquiescent chums. It will be a good test of how tight the knots are that bind this coalition of convenience.

Not to mention figuring out how to pacify a large part of the electorate pissed at having their votes count for nothing.

All that to be accomplished in the next couple of years?

All I can say to that: He asked for it.

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THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist. - Mkini