We need ministers and all levels of civil servants who will get down to work and improve, or else it won’t make any difference whether the cabinet is reshuffled, or whether we have a new government at all!

Although Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has kept mum over it, there have been rumors that a cabinet reshuffle is imminent. This Sunday, DPM Ahmad Zahid hinted after a meeting with Umno Putrajaya division leadership that the PM could announce a cabinet reshuffle in near future, mainly to fill the vacancy left by the late Minister of Domestic Trade and Costs of Living Salahuddin Ayub.

However, the PM’s speeches at various recent occasions have put the weight on next year’s budget, and as such, it is widely anticipated that a cabinet reshuffle will only be announced after the tabling of 2024 Budget next Friday.

The Unity Government is more than 10 months old since the cabinet was put up last December, and the performance of various ministers during this “probation period” could be best epitomized with a simple statement: more talk than action. Sure enough the PM has his own set of KPIs to gauge the performance of his men in cabinet, and we will know how they fare once the new cabinet line-up is unveiled.

During Muhyiddin’s time, the cabinet had an excessively bloated line-up of 31 ministers and 39 deputy ministers manning 27 different ministries, mostly through political appointments for allegiance. Last year, PM Anwar on more than one occasion promised to downsize the cabinet, but the number of appointees he announced was only marginally lower, from 67 (in Ismail Sabri’s cabinet) to 55, but no reduction in the number of ministries.

Distribution of cabinet positions has been a major stake in Anwar’s putting up a Unity Government cabinet, and because of that, we cannot have unrealistic expectations from the PM. Other than his own party PKR, Anwar can hardly touch the positions allocated to the other parties in the Unity Government, for example the 11 positions reserved for Umno and seven for GPS. No matter how he is going to shuffle his cabinet, he can only do so within the “quotas” for individual parties.

We all know about meritocracy and putting the most eligible people in the right positions, but this doesn’t seem to work in Malaysia’s cabinet appointment. Putting up a solid and high-caliber team is a tall order where the vested interests of politicians supersede national interests. That said, Anwar has an inevasible obligation to put up the most corruption-free and efficient team possible for the well-being of the rakyat.

Last month, during his meeting with top guns of US multinationals in New York, he concluded that foreign investors were turned off by Malaysia’s poor efficiency and red tape while applying to invest in the country. Imagine the Little Napoleons making life difficult for potential foreign investors loaded with funds when applying to invest here at the invitation of our prime minister.

Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Tiong King Sing is equally frustrated with the poor efficiency of civil servants at tourism offices. Apparently, ministers are not to take the blame sometimes, but the laggard officials at grassroots level!

So, to reshuffle the cabinet, the prime minister should start with overhauling the job efficiency of grassroots civil servants. Perhaps our ministers should also spend a bit more time going down to the field, and ax the underperformers if necessary. We need ministers and all levels of civil servants who will get down to work and improve, or else it won’t make any difference whether the cabinet is reshuffled, or whether we have a new government at all!