Ministers must challenge each other in the public domain

 

From Ibrahim M Ahmad

Health minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa was not wrong to raise the issue of period poverty among women and girls, but she looked rather silly when announcing her initiative and later trying to justify it after it created an uproar.

As the country’s first female health minister, Zaliha was expected to give a higher level of attention to women’s issues than her predecessors, but was rightly pilloried for limiting the programme to her own ministry and piloting it at its headquarters in Putrajaya.

She then sought to justify it by saying that she wanted the project to take off there so that her ministry could look at the “operational aspects” and get immediate feedback.  She added that, if successful, the project could be expanded “to strategic health facilities and involve the public.”

The public outcry in response to her comments is entirely justified.

Why would period poverty be an issue among health ministry staff, especially in Putrajaya? What “operational” issues was she hoping to iron out before taking the project to where it was really needed?

It goes without saying – and yet paradoxically must be said – that any lack of access to sanitary products arising from financial constraints among women and girls would occur among the poor, namely those in the “Bottom 40” (B40) segment of our society.

Kudos then to women, family and community development minister Nancy Shukri for stepping forward to publicly address the weaknesses of the health minister’s plan.

“(The government) should target those who are truly struggling, like the Orang Asli and the Bottom 40 income group,” she said when confronted by the press with Zaliha’s plan.

Nancy’s remarks are premised on common sense. Programmes seeking to eradicate poverty – period or otherwise – must target the poor.

Criticism levelled at Nancy, especially by netizens on social media – including on FMT’s own Twitter and Facebook feeds – miss the mark entirely.

For a democracy to thrive, ministers must be brave enough to call their own colleagues out in public when they propose misguided policies or make rudimentary errors in the public sphere.

Nancy is well within her rights to advance her ministry’s cause even if it means ruffling the feathers of another Cabinet member.

Leaders must be able to challenge each other in the public domain so that the government as a collective performs to the highest level of its competence.

The woman in the street also needs to hear her leader speak out on her behalf so that she can have confidence that her government is acting in her best interests.

Netizens who suggest that the two ministers – normally political foes but now Cabinet colleagues – should have restricted themselves to debating the matter in the closed confines of a Cabinet meeting or, as is the rage these days, in the Cabinet’s WhatsApp chat group, miss the point entirely.

Collective responsibility does not mean ministers should keep disputes or disagreements between themselves private all the time.

Democracy is noisy, as 15th US president James Buchanan once said. The public is entitled to hear those noises even if they emanate from debates raging within the Cabinet. Such noises signal that the government of the people is working for the people.

The prime minister would do well to allow his ministers to debate matters openly. If the debate gets too noisy or heated, he can easily step in and quieten his charges or cool them down.

For now, all he needs to do is tell his fledgling Cabinet ministers to work together to draw up a common policy so that the health minister’s vision of eradicating period poverty is implemented for the benefit of women and girls among the urban and rural poor, which should please their own minister.

They may well have to rope in rural and regional minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi to deal with the “operational aspects” of addressing period poverty – a matter that seems of some concern to the health minister.

That last thought put a chuckle on my face and seems like a good way to end this letter. Period. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.