Remember ‘Yes Minister’?

The civil service is the enemy in the blanket. The civil service is Umno's running dog. The civil service is a Trojan Horse. The civil service is throwing spanners into the works. The civil service is putting sand in the rice-bowl. (Need more clichés?) And Tan Sri Khalid is fiddling while Rome is burning. (Yet another cliché.) THE CORRIDORS OF POWER Raja Petra Kamarudin My favourite satire back in my younger days was 'Yes Minister', which later went on to become 'Yes Prime Minister' when the actor in that series got 'promoted' to prime minister. Of course, next year, I am going to be 60. So when I talk about 'my younger days' I really mean my younger days. Those of you still wet behind the ears have probably never heard of this British TV series. Now, why is it called a satire and not a comedy show? It is a comedy show. But satires are normally comedy shows that make fun of reality. For example, if we satire an Umno meeting, we show every 'leader' driving up in BMWs or Mercedes Benzes wearing bush jackets and with so much money stuffed into their bulging pockets that the surplus 'tercicir' as they walk into the room. (Tercicir could be read as falling out, dribbling, scattered around, etc.) 'Yes Minister' was a satire of the UK government at work. And it shows that the civil service runs the country and the politicians must take care of the civil service if they want to survive. It also shows the civil service as devious and manipulative while the politicians are a bit slow in the head and most times naïve. In one dialogue, the junior civil servant asks the senior civil servant as to who runs the country if not the politicians. "Heavens no. It would be disastrous to allow the politicians to run the country. The civil service runs the country of course. But we have to make the politicians feel like they are running the country." That would be what I would call a satire because that is how it really works in real life and making fun of reality is what satires are all about. I remember a certain episode that is still fresh in my mind that happened not long after April 1999 when Parti Keadilan Nasional (the forerunner to Parti Keadilan Rakyat) was formed. Just to digress a bit. I met Anwar Ibrahim in court back in 1998 where he requested my help. Anwar wanted me in the Research & Development team, which was basically a psy-war unit. Our job was to plan how to attack Umno and Barisan Nasional and keep them constantly on the move so that they would have no time to attack the opposition since they would be too busy defending themselves. Anyway, back to that episode I spoke about. I was travelling through the East Coast states to assess whether the opposition could retain Kelantan and add Terengganu to the list of states under opposition control and whether we can dent Umno bad enough in Pahang, in particular in Pekan where Najib Tun Razak would be contesting. I found Kelantan quite safe. The Kelantan state civil servants I spoke to appeared very supportive of PAS. Some of them were my old schoolmates and they had nothing but good things to say about PAS. I did not need to spend too much time in Kelantan. Even the kaki gedebeh I spoke to were supportive of Nik Aziz, the Kelantan Chief Minister. "If even people like us support Tok Guru," they said in Malay, "how can PAS lose?" 'People like us' meant thugs or gangsters who do not pray and are involved in all sorts of illegal things including murder. In Terengganu I met with the same response. The instant I walked into the government departments the civil servants told me, "Don't waste your time in Terengganu. Go back to KL. PAS is going to win big in Terengganu with a landslide victory." And the opposition did win. It won all eight Parliament seats and 28 of the 32 state seats. Not all were PAS seats though. The Parliament seat of Kemaman was won by Parti Keadilan. And Tok Guru Haji Hadi Awang graciously introduced the new Terengganu state government as the Barisan Alternatif government and not the PAS government. And he instructed that this would be how the state government would be addressed -- the BA government of Terengganu. I thought that this was jolly nice of him. Parti Keadilan won only one Parliament seat and no state seats. Yet he still wanted the state government to be known as a BA rather than PAS government. The opposition did not do that well in Pahang though. But at least Najib was defeated in Pekan. Najib lost by about 1,800 votes. But then, after the counting of the votes had ended, they brought in 2,000 postal votes and announced that Najib had won by 200 votes instead. But never mind. We all know that Najib lost the election in 1999 and that means he should actually not be the Prime Minister today because he was an illegal Cabinet Minister from 1999 to 2004. And in 2003 he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister when he should not have even been a Member of Parliament. That is why Najib was not called Wakil Rakyat but Wakil Pos. Zambry in Perak is called Wakil Mahkamah. Not long after the opposition won Terengganu, Tun Dr Mahathir cancelled the oil royalty that was due to the state. This happened merely a few months after November 1999. Suddenly the state lost RM600 million a year in revenue -- what the oil royalty was then; now it is about RM1 billion a year. It cost about RM600 million a year to run the state and the oil royalty sort of just covered that. The state government had to quickly look into a cost reduction exercise and it managed to bring its RM600 million a year cost down to just RM300 million. That was a 50% drop in expenses. Next they needed to look into where to get RM300 million a year to pay for the cost of running the state. The new BA state government had already abolished toll charges and council taxes. This means these two revenue sources were now gone. Nevertheless, they managed to find RM300 million a year to cover the running cost of the state while the RM600 million oil royalty -- that increased to RM800 million and later to RM1 billion -- went to Umno, in particular to Idris Jusoh, the head of Umno Terengganu. But this meant there would be no development. The RM300 million ngam-ngam paid for the running cost of the state. There would also be no outstation trips or overtime for the civil servants. The state could not afford to pay the civil servants any 'claims'. And in the past the claims used to be higher than their salaries. In fact, the civil servants could not afford to live just on their salaries alone. They needed the extra income from their claims to survive. So they resorted to selling cakes and cookies after office hours to supplement their income. But if everyone were to sell cakes and cookies then who is buying? It was an absolute sellers market. There were not many buyers. I started getting feedback from Terengganu that the civil servants are not happy and that they are thinking of giving the state back to Umno. I triggered the alarm bells but my pompous asshole of a boss pooh-poohed my report. "Not only is Terengganu secure, but we shall be adding Pahang and Kedah to the list of states under opposition control," he told me. I disagreed and told him so. And that was not the first disagreement we had. I had earlier disagreed with how the party was handling the seat negotiations with PAS and DAP. And when he told me that Parti Keadilan would probably be 'going solo' in the elections and will engage BN, PAS and DAP in three- or four-corner fights, I suggested he just close down our department and we all go home. "We are wasting our time," I told him. "We shall be defeated and not only lose the election but lose all our deposits as well." It came to a stage that he refused to speak to me direct and had to use a middleman to pass me messages. Immediately after the November 1999 general election he gave me 24 hours notice and told me to pack my things and get out. Wow! I had never been sacked in my life, at least not with 24 hours notice, and that hurt like mad. Anyway, Anwar Ibrahim knew that the seat negotiation was falling apart and that the party was talking about three- and four-corner fights so he asked someone else to take over. This person knew about my quarrel with my boss and he called me over to ask me what the issue was about. I told him and also told him why I felt they were handling the seat negotiation the wrong way. This new chap managed to salvage the negotiations and the opposition went into the 1999 general election as BA although there were some isolated cases of three-corner fights when the boys on the ground disagreed with the choice of candidate. But that is again digressing so let us get back to the story of Terengganu. The civil servants were not happy. In 1999 they gave the state to the opposition. But this has resulted in a big dent in their income. Now they are suffering, financially. In 2004 they would give the state back to Umno. And they did. The opposition was practically wiped out in the March 2004 general election. The civil service has that power to make and break governments and there is much truth in that British TV series, 'Yes Minister'. Perak is another case in point. When the civil servants from the State Secretary down to the office boy work with Umno, the Pakatan Rakyat state government can easily be removed from office. They can lock up the Menteri Besar's room and refuse to allow him to enter. They can physically carry the Speaker and throw him out of the State Assembly like a sack of potatoes. They can lock the gates to the State Secretariat building and ban the opposition state assemblypersons, even the Menteri Besar and Speaker, from getting in. Yes, watch the satire 'Yes Minister' if you have not already done so. The civil service can bring down the government. And they can bring down the Selangor state government if they want to. And rest assured they are working behind the scenes to ensure that Selangor falls back into the hands of Barisan Nasional. Give Pakatan Rakyat a chance, many argue. Give Tan Sri Khalid more time, they plead. It is not fair to expect so much in just one year when Barisan Nasional has been running this country for more than 50 years.. I have no problems with giving the opposition even ten years. After all, Barisan Nasional was given 50 years so why not the opposition be given ten years? But the problem is not me. I am only one vote. The opposition was only a one-term government in Terengganu. It appears like it is also going to be a one-term government in Selangor. The civil service helped bring down the Pakatan Rakyat government in Perak. Say what you like: the two PKR Wakil Rakyat crossed over, Hee crossed over, and whatnot. But if the civil service had not locked the doors on Pakatan Rakyat and opened the back door for Barisan Nasional to walk in they could not have brought the state government down. The same thing is happening in Selangor. The civil service is the enemy in the blanket. The civil service is Umno's running dog. The civil service is a Trojan Horse. The civil service is throwing spanners into the works. The civil service is putting sand in the rice-bowl. (Need more clichés?) And Tan Sri Khalid is fiddling while Rome is burning. (Yet another cliché.) Unless Tan Sri Khalid wakes up and realises that he is being surrounded by wolves in sheep's clothing, expect Selangor to go back to Barisan Nasional in the not too distant future.