By Steven Sim

Minister Mohamad Nazri Aziz appointment of his son Mohamad Nedim Nazri as a “special officer” in his Ministry created a furor recently with even pro-government bloggers calling it “nepotism”. Nazri defended the appointment by saying it is his prerogative as Minister, and that his son is an nonsalaried staff.

On the other hand, Chief Minister of Penang, Lim Guan Eng, said that since May 5 election, the Penang state government forbids state excos from appointing their family members as staff.

I think while Malaysians are rightly angered by acts of nepotism especially prevalent in the Barisan Nasional government, we should not miss the point about such political appointment.

Political appointees are norm

First, we must acknowledge that political appointment is a norm in all governments. Let us be clear that a political appointee is not a career civil servant. The ruling party appoints its ally in key positions of the government to provide the direction and leadership and to align government machinery to the vision of the Prime Minister. In 2009, I was invited by the Department of States to observe the transition of power from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. During that transition period, we were informed that more than 3000 political appointees will move out together with the Bush administration to be replaced by Obama’s political appointees. Within his First 100 Days, Obama had to fill more than 400 key senior positions including his Cabinet with the others being filled in the next one year.

Political appointees per se are not the problem

Our problem in Malaysia is the skewed and selfish narrow agenda of the ruling party, which is then carried out through the leadership of thousands of political appointees throughout the system.  Hence, we must recognise that on its own, political appointment is not technically the main problem. It is a fact of life, to put it crudely.

An elected leader may appoint his or her ally to aid in the execution of political programme through the term. If the appointee is not a family member, would it be better if the appointee is a “mere” party ally, or ideological ally? Would it be better if Nazri did not appoint his son but instead appoints an UMNO division leader from his constituency to that position? Or what if he appoints his political protege? Thus, again the problem is not political appointment per se.

What is needed is to shed light and legislate on political appointees

What we must do in wake of the Nazri-Nedim furor is to re-examine the position of political appointees. It is high time we deal with what is more substantial. Let’s face the reality about political appointees, they are here to stay (and justifiably so), what we need to do is to impose limitations on their number, power and role. I believe it is time that we even legislate the role of political appointees in order to make such appointments and their activities more transparent. Without such sunshine policy, we allow the Executive to do acrobatic on the number of appointees hire, their salary, their influence and power etc. Would we rather have our Ministers telling us their political staff are “volunteers” and hence not subjected to public scrutiny? Would we prefer the acrobatic explanations from politicians about political appointees “working for free” and then have undisclosed source of income rather than a clear guideline on incentives and gains for these staff, who are in fact holders of public office.

This is important because political appointees not only is able to influence government machinery during their term but may also be influential after their term is over, with some of them playing lobbyists or agents for personal and commercial interests seeking to win favour with government agencies.

A federal- and state-level Political Appointee Legislation should be created to

1) identify the offices of political appointees throughout government administration,

2) limit the number of political appointees, their salaries and perks,

3) create ethical code of conduct of political appointees, including public declaration of assets, recusation in events of conflict of interest, etc.,

If we are serious about integrity and good governance, this should be done. We should not let the so-called accusation of nepotism muddle the bigger issue. Pretending that political appointees do not exist and ignoring the nature of their work only serve as a smokescreen for more “hanky panky” to take place.