[sangkancil] El Samy to senior civil servants: Do as I say, not as I do


To sangkancil@malaysia.net
From "M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>
Date Mon, 11 May 1998 09:23:36 +0800
CC sk@malaysia.net
Organization Journalist


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The El Samy, to show reporters that he is on top of any situtation, 
called his senior officers on a Sunday, yesterday, on their cellular 
phones.  None answered, with one even saying he is not to be botheed 
on a Sunday.  He then lamely says these officials may have been in 
the jungle and the phones may have been out of reach.  If the phones 
were shut off, as he thought, how does he know they were in the 
jungle.  But this ministerial insistence that their senior civil 
servants are as incapable and inefficient as they are has become the 
hallmark of the modern cabinet minister in Bolehland.  They even have 
to be sent to courses to learn crisis management, something that our 
previous civil servants were proficient in.  As the former civil 
servants, Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Dato' 
Abu Hassan Omar, et al.

        Neither addresses the main issue -- the shortage of water -- and 
everyone focuses on the irrelevant and inefficient.  But the El Samy 
exercise yesterday convinced every one that the civil servants indeed 
are.  We only suspected that before.  And for El Samy to say he 
always suffers from watershortage, what was he trying to prove?  
Would he go to bed without his airconditioning on as his 
contribution to save water?  How can, I minister what ... but I shall 
instruct my senior civil servants that they should;  after all, when 
the people suffer, we should also suffer with them.  But as a 
minister, I must have these things.  I represent the people, you see, 
and they must never be forced to see a minister sweltering;  besides 
my hair stylist says that my transplanted hair will wilt.  And in 
these difficult days of saving foreign exchange, the country will 
lose. 

        But all El Samy is angry about is that he could not contact his
senior officers to get some irrelevant information, and he blows his
top.  Why does he not raise this at next week's cabinet meeting, and
then promptly come and shoot his mouth off as to what happened?  Or
he then takes punitive action against these senior civil servants,
and then tell us.  We would be more impressed.  Now, I for one would
just yawn, and skip to the next news item.  Why should a man who
does not know what caused the crisis, does not know how to get out
of it,  does not care what happens, be angry because some irrelevant
statistics he wanted to impress the reporters with could not be got?  
But then, we are in Bolehland, are we not?

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my 

One wishes the Malaysian public has as much fortitude as the MIC 
members who regularly hurl curses at El Samy when he speaks.  It is 
time the cabinet ministers are told where they stand.

--
M.G.G. Pillai
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