JULY 21 — My friends on the "inside" always chide me, they say for all my protestations and condemnations I have to admit without power you are unlikely to affect real change. The nuts and bolts of running a country.
They are in power, and I am not in power.
However, the bulk of my friends are reformists; they want to change things by working with the power order of the day. Because they don't disagree with me that the country needs to move forward, they just differ on the method.
In real terms, they'll work with Barisan Nasional (BN) — those who've run the country since 1955 — to make a better Malaysia. I stand on the principle this country cannot progress in any meaningful way under BN in its present shape and form, and work with other like-minded people to remove it from power so that the country has a chance for a better future.
As for my friends, the inside-reformists, despite hoping for their success I fear they won't.
It is important to make the distinction between an existing government, working government and an efficient government, so that the bar is set fairly for the inside-reformists — before I criticise them.
Imagine government being a singular transport bus, a public paid and managed bus.
An existing government means that for the money paid, the said bus is physically present under the care of the state and it plies the route. Proving there is a government, that it exists.
A working government would be for the bus to stop at designated stops, operate for the hours stipulated, have reasonable frequency and rarely breaks down.
An efficient government, a bus which realigns its routes and stops to prevailing commute numbers, has a highly accurate bus schedule, has easy and useful ticketing, multi-channels to transmit information to the public in multi-languages, has staff who are trained, communicative and determined to get you to work and home.
It will go further, it will develop better maintenance schedules so that there is little downtime, it will equip its staff with basic management skills to meet the demands of their jobs, engage community to find out why the routes need tinkering, convince people who are not into buses to give buses a try and the list goes on.
I understand the above is a simplification, but it does distinguish what is paraded by the BN as great government (something between existing and working) and what real change means.
Who is the inside-reformist?
Most come from establishment families. They see the disparity between how things are and where the world is heading. However, they are saddled with the knowledge "their past" is responsible for the reality. And rejecting the present system would equate to condemning what has raised them and displace the people they prefer from power.
Primarily children of BN politicians, civil servants and business allies of BN.
They reach a mental impasse and resort to intuition, choose to make things better with the people they know. Plus the benefit of being in the ruling class, they've got the education, savvy and worldly knowledge to pinpoint the weaknesses of new pretenders to the throne. So in their equation, their side can improve and the other side is flawed, so in net terms status quo is better.
The preference for those already in power can also be attributed to our neo-feudal society. A permanent hierarchy has always been championed and naysayers condemned as traitors prior to British rule. Colonial rule only entrenched it further.
What the inside-reformist wants and how he goes about it
To start with as demonstrated by previous explanations above, he does not want BN out of power.
All change must happen in a BN-run Malaysia reality.
Nothing odd really: More democracy, better government (the focus) to bring more social benefits (education, healthcare and security) and economy (jobs, higher income and manageable cost of living) to its people.
The means begin with a career in Umno — Malaysia's ruling party — or joining one of those state-linked/owned/run organisations to shape the future (Pemandu, Khazanah, government lawyers, Economic Planning Unit, Bank Negara etc)
Why the inside-reformist fails
Change happens through sacrifices, not through launches.
To be less abstract, let's identify which virtues are heralded as pillars of great society.
Participation, ideas, transparency, process-driven, checks and balances and personal freedoms.
Which of them do you see Umno openly and stoutly championing?
The elitism and pecking order culture in government already obscures many if not all the pillars.
What prevails? Ideas from those in power monopolise and they will be prioritised even if they are done without process. Local stakeholders get to watch decisions from afar while having to live through those decisions. Passive agreement is held as model behaviour and active disagreement stamped out with brute force. Spending is opaque, ever-increasing and beyond reproach. Personal freedom is what BN supporters get to have when on overseas trips.
The mountain facing the inside-reformist is already daunting.
To be a success he needs to confront the three banes of Malaysia: the over-centralisation of power (Putrajaya knows best) — bloated civil service; unfettered businessmen-politicians nexus; and failing public services.
They all come down to divestment of powers. Letting more Malaysians have actual control of decision-making at local levels, scrutinising the liberalisation and globalisation of Malaysian business by being fair to both capitalists and consumers and increasing the ringgit-spent-returns in civil service employment and expenditure.
It is about power sharing.
However the inside-reformists will find decision-makers averse to power divestments. They are unwilling to reduce the power in their hands while wanting a different outcome. This is when the reformist becomes flustered and then frustrated, to finally quitting or abandoning the reform agenda till things are more conducive.
A hypothetical scenario.
The police start to build better community relationships and local initiative. More police beats according to residents' advice, scheduled meet-the-people sessions and appointing community liaisons.
But those obligations will quickly take a backseat when a minister visits since all personnel need to attend to the VIP. And later those progresses might collapse completely because the home minister has contracted an IT firm with a web-based HR solution to integrate police — auxiliary police — Rela (voluntary corps) — work-flow, impacting on KPIs.
Centrally aggregated information based on what residents fill electronically on the website will be the main template for deployment, and personnel transfers will be built-in from user service feedback. Previous efforts will be discarded and the new system will bring a better future.
The minister does not need to bother with previous groundwork, he is a minister, for the love of Zogba. Plus the IT solution includes biometric scanning.
And yes, we would be the first in the world to do it. (In Malaysia, lab rats are superior to humans because the former gets to taste all kinds of trial drugs first.)
Can you see such a scenario playing out in Malaysia?
And in such a scenario will the inside-reformist — as special officer or police planner or Pemandu point-man to the police force — manage to advise the minister away from his own initiative? I'd say very unlikely, unless the prime minister's men have their own IT firm in mind. Then it's about which IT firm, not how to improve community policing.
Decisions will always be top down in this BN government.
Second, BN adopts a zero-loss attitude to new policies.
They are game for any new policy as long as it does not lose them anything. The want their cake and eat it too. In place of an actual commitment to change, they'll commit to the most outlandish name for the policies.
Just look at our major problem, our public schools. They are in a major state of disrepair.
A combination of corporatisation, decentralisation of management to states and districts, streamlining courses to modern educational needs, a standard examination and possibly privatising some of the schools is necessary.
But BN will do little but announce more new measures. The system needs an overhaul. Do you remember one educational policy which was proposed, kept to its spirit and kept in the schools long enough to bear fruit? Everything mutates as each policy stutters through filter after filter to end up as something ineffectual.
Why risk the future of our children? That question is passed on, like everything else. There are more riveting priorities and they are met.
BN needs the teachers' vote, their "support" when they serve as election personnel during polls and they need the 11 years to "streamline" young minds to become BN voters. Everything else is secondary, and they are willing for the deep labyrinth of technocrats to run the show with infrastructure contracts, overlaps of courses built on psychological conditioning rather than intellectual emancipation and of course "majlis makan" (dining events) after "majlis makan."
The malaise inside Umno is so embedded that no clever adjusting of present measures will revive reason. It's not that the inside-reformist is incapable, unwilling or lacking imagination.
Reason has been buried a long time ago in those corridors and only the blunt strike like an electoral loss will resuscitate Umno-run BN. Right now, my friends, the inside-reformists are just applying band-aids to a corpse.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. 
The Malaysian Insider :: Food
NUERBURGRING, July 21 – World champion Sebastian Vettel believes this weekend's German Grand Prix could be more wide open than other recent Formula One races but compatriot Michael Schumacher is sure his Mercedes will not win.
LISBON, July 21 – Spanish defender Joan Capdevila has agreed to join Benfica on a two-year contract for an undisclosed fee from Villarreal, the Portuguese club said on their website today.
The nine nods for Perry (picture), 26, were the climax of an extraordinary 12 months that has seen the once struggling gospel singer reinvent herself as a pop sex kitten with a string of hits like "California Gurls", "Teenage Dream" and "Firework".
When Daimler brought the Smart to China in April 2009, it was no sure bet. The global vehicle industry was sputtering amid a steep downturn and the Chinese government had to resort to aggressive stimulus measures to keep its motor manufacturers afloat.
KUALA LUMPUR, 21 Julai — Polis menolak semua dakwaan dan tohmahan yang dilemparkan pihak tertentu yang mendakwa pasukan keselamatan itu melakukan kekerasan semasa menghuraikan perhimpunan Bersih 2.0 di ibu negara, 9 Julai lalu kecuali melepaskan tembakan gas pemedih mata dan meriam air ke arah Hospital Tung Shin.
"Apa sahaja tindakan prosedur operasi standard (SOP) yang ditetapkan sekiranya berlaku pelanggaran kita akan ambil tindakan," katanya.
KUALA LUMPUR, 21 Julai — Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia (SPRM) berkata pihaknya akan segera meneliti secara keseluruhan laporan suruhanjaya diraja siasatan mengenai kematian Teoh Beng Hock dan mengambil tindakan sewajarnya ke atas sebarang cadangan atau syor diketengahkan.