Ali Hamsa, don’t bully the weak – Ravinder Singh

It’s a shame for the top civil servant, the Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Ali Hamsa, to threaten to sack government servants who attended the anti-GST (goods and services tax) rally in Kuala Lumpur on Labour Day. What is the “udang sebalik batu” (hidden agenda) of this threat?

If he is sincere, he should be brave enough to issue this threat to the thieving heads of departments who are siphoning billions of ringgit yearly through procurement prices that are dozens of times higher than actual prevailing market prices.

The annual Auditor-General’s reports are full of these stories year after year. These heads of departments are the ones who need to be given the boot either for criminal breach of trust (CBT) or for just being “stupid”. Why does Ali Hamsa condone “stupid” heads of departments running the government?

I shudder to think that this is the way hudud will be implemented if it ever gets through the legislative process. The big criminals go free while the small ones get hands cut off without anaesthesia.  

Ali is only brave to issue this threat because any government servant who took part in the rally must be those from the lower-income groups who find it difficult to make ends meets. In children’s language, what he is doing is to “buli kecik”, i.e. bullying those weaker than oneself. 

His threat is simply intimidation of the weak. The hidden agenda is to try and keep the vote-bank intact. We have seen how during election season, government servants are told to show gratitude to the government for giving them employment; that they should not bite the hand that feeds them.

The huge, bloated public service is not for the sake of giving employment to the people. It is designed as a vote-bank of the ruling party.

The ruling party’s strategy has been to buy votes by giving jobs to as many as possible. That is the only reason for our bloated government service. It therefore uses psychological approaches to keep the vote-bank intact. 

What Ali is doing is trying to hold the government servants to ransom, i.e. be politically loyal to the ruling party, or else... There is no real intention to sack any government servants. What charges can be brought against them under the General Orders for attending the rally outside of their working hours?

On the other hand, if they are sacked, and the cases land in court, the courts that ruled there was no need for motive in the Altantuya case, could easily find that there is no need to show any breach of the General Orders, as “akujanji” overrides the General Orders.   

The idea of the threat is to bring them back to support the ruling party and vote for it at the next election, which is being seen as a do or die election for the 55 year-old-government.

Thank you, Ali, for confirming that the next election could be a do-or-die battle for your present master.

* Ravinder Singh reads The Malaysian Insider.