DECEMBER 14 — I got it wrong. Two months ago, the prediction was a minor reshuffle to replace the late Salahuddin Ayub, and a small tinker related to one MP from Amanah, Salahuddin’s party.
Instead, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim conducted the largest Cabinet minister reshuffle, matching May 20, 1987 when Mahathir Mohamed was forced to replace 11 ministers eviscerated from his Cabinet following an open rebellion in Umno — Team A vs Team B and the 70 votes, you must have watched the film!
Anwar’s 2023 version eclipses other previous Cabinet reshuffles, not the least the one after the then deputy prime minister’s 1998 sacking, and Muhyiddin Yassin and gang’s sacking in 2015.
And so, this week, 11 ministers began fresh postings, even if the saving grace is that fewer heads were lopped compared to 1987. Only one minister was axed; however five were introduced and six were reassigned.
Pundits in an earnest desire to curry favour with the Madani administration were excessively complimentary of this latest stratagem. It would be fine to be non-committal but to wax lyrically about a major reshuffle, miffs.
If the centre of all concerns is how well the Cabinet can turn the country around via their respective ministries under the supervision of the prime minister, more than a third of the portfolios changing heads cannot inspire confidence about the administration. In and out of the country.
It’s a massive reset and for so few eyebrows raised baffles.
Consider the version of musical chairs for Umno, where a trio exchanged roles — Mohamad Hasan vacates defence for Khaled Nordin so he can move to foreign affairs as Zambry Kadir departs for Khaled’s now vacated higher education.
Which one of them failed to deliver after only a year, or were they bored?
More so, how can the prime minister claim a year of success if 11 different bosses are needed at ministries — along with 16 redeployed, reintroduced or recruited deputy ministers?
Or are Malaysians expected to have mass cognitive dissonance, to accept a reality of one year of excellence topped with at the end a third of the Cabinet reordered? That it was so awesome it just had to be altered radically at the end of Year One?
A bit like 2021’s Adam Mackay-over the top film, Don’t Look Up where a fictional US government solves the problem of an impending meteor crashing on earth by asking people well not to do what the movie title asks. There is no meteor if you choose to not look at the meteor.
Shifts in portfolios can also lead to other newer troubles.
Those 11 and their teams have to reestablish themselves at the ministries, to navigate hundreds of thousands of civil servants and millions of citizens. Start fresh again. And for six relocated, they have to live with the various permutations of the “truth” on why they were moved, therefore endeavour to win new friends and build trust with stakeholders shrouded by a degree of suspicion.
Does not help that the prime minister expect them to deliver immediately.
Do not gobble up Goebbels, my old professor used to remind me when interpreting political actions. There’s subtext, if you bother to dig up. If you bother, he leaves students to ponder.
A long road to nowhere, often
How pleasant to have a portfolio? Regaled by many in the moment but be forewarned, government work is frequently a puzzle for elected officials.
Regularly, ministries are abstractions, their civil servants in the majority adamant on lifelong employment rather than perspiring to ensure citizens experience a better life longer, policies are lost between the fine print and protocols and ministers feted with salutations longer than the Penang Bridge get carried away with feeling important rather than doing important things.
Malaysia has other localised problems.
Decades of using the civil servants to secure power — government machinery utilisation to win elections, opposition leaders alienated to reduce their efficacy and relentless delivery of party propaganda — has organically morphed into a political contract. Civil servants will serve those objectives if politicians by large leave them alone inside their bureaucracy labyrinth.
If the Anwar administration has struggled in the first year, more blame should be apportioned to senior civil servants in particular.
They do not have an agenda competing with the prime minister and his ministers, but they can out of self-interest bog down things to snail pace then to nothingness.
The 11 ministers, like the 19 who stayed put in their portfolios, are forced to bend the civil service to their will — or try their damndest. They need the service to carry in good-faith their intentions and policy implorations.
Otherwise, it is running against a wall, the outcome does not need months to be guessed.
The Anwar Rule
Another consideration to read the reshuffle exists.
A study of the prime minister in his Umno years, and the handling of PKR in the proceeding years, displays a penchant to not let potential rivals to pick up steam. In the present unity government, as it stands, the PM can emerge from either PKR or Umno. Those are who he must fear.
PKR Deputy President Rafizi Ramli burdened with the economy portfolio is under massive pressure. He has no substantial success yet and people are keen to blame him for the overall economy’s failure. A transfer, like to education, can only benefit him, so he stays put.
Umno president Zahid Hamidi is an Anwar loyalist, with rumours of an imminent exit at the next party election. Regardless of gossip, he never fails Anwar, which is the same reason PKR Secretary-General Saifuddin Nasution remains at the powerful home ministry.
Zahid’s possible rivals — Mohamad, Khaled and Zambry — have new tasks to master, potentially distracting them from party ascension. Zahid’s deputy Mohamad as foreign minister must trek the world at a time Anwar intends to increase Malaysia’s visibility in Asean and OIC, while engage with China’s territorial overreaches and wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
A new iteration on powerplay is on the cards. He already has his enemies close, but now he can go to the next level, to occupy them and reduce their chances to establish a ministerial base.
Does the reshuffle therefore act also as a political manoeuvre to distract personalities?
Concessions to what?
It’s a cruel joke that Anwar replicates the second finance minister approach first adopted by Mahathir to avoid no finance minister getting as powerful as Anwar got back then controlling the country’s coffers.
Now Anwar turns to ex-EPF chief Amir Hamzah Azizan to manage the nuts and bolts as second finance minister while critical decisions are always his to make. Much Mahathir?
Perhaps, but this decision might actually advance the government than not.
Anwar does not concede usually, he absorbs criticisms and deflects them while building a larger network of support.
This reshuffle so far has been downplayed as necessary and routine, even if it is not. Not this size, not these personnel, but the die in this case has been cast. 2024 will tell more and perhaps better how well this attempt to reassure is received by the rakyat.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
