Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday morning. Although new ministries have been created, the overall size of the line-up is still smaller than those of previous administrations.

The latest reshuffle sees five new faces in the cabinet, with six ministries seeing swapping of personnel.

Following the reshuffle, DAP will have one additional minister, from four to five, while the number of deputy ministers remains at six.

The incumbent human resources minister V. Sivakumar and deputy minister in the PM’s department (law and institutional reform) Ramkarpal Singh have been dropped.

Anwar said the Pakatan health minister Dr. Zulkefly Ahmad was reinstated because the ministry was facing tremendous challenges that required someone experienced to head the ministry. While announcing the new cabinet line-up, Anwar did explain why he brought back Zulkefly.

Former KWSP CEO Amir Hamzah Azizan has been appointed finance minister II, as the prime minister is convinced by his management ability and competence while heading the retirement fund.

Anwar also said his government took the challenges from digital transformation very seriously, and he had therefore decided to split the communications and digital ministry into two, with Fahmi Fadzil helming the communications portfolio, assisted by Teo Nie Ching; and DAP’s MP for Damansara Gobind Singh Deo returning to lead the digital ministry.

As the education sector will also institute digital transformation in  near future, the PM said, it is therefore necessary to split the ministry and let the experienced Gobind be minister.

Anwar also said barring any drastic changes in the country’s political and economic scenario, this new cabinet line-up will last until the next general election.

He also said he had given the cabinet line-up very thoughtful consideration before it was finalised.

Having been prime minister for just over a year, Anwar should know very well how his cabinet colleagues have performed. It is therefore necessary for him to reshuffle his cabinet in order to tackle the changes taking place within and without the country. And we shouldn’t see the cabinet reshuffle as yet another manoeuvre to reward political allegiance.

It is hoped that the newly minted ministers as well as all civil servants will abandon their erstwhile lackadaisical attitude in pursuit of excellence.

A day before he announced the new cabinet line-up, PM Anwar told the civil servants that they should not be complacent hut should always strive to do better and excel instead.

Not only civil servants, the same spirit of excellence should also prevail in the corporate sector.

Jensen Huang, the Nvidia co-founder who visited Malaysia last week, said he wakes up each morning worried his company might fail, despite the fact Nvidia boasts a market capitalisation of US$1.19 trillion, and his personal worth of US$43.5 billion.

Huang’s interviewer, Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times, said Huang’s worry was largely derived from competition in the industry, but for us, it is a manifestation of his spirit in continued pursuit of excellence, and this seems to echo with what PM Anwar has told the civil servants, that they must not be complacent but should continue to excel.

Huang’s Nvidia is the world’s eighth company to have breached the trillion dollar mark in market capitalisation (three times Malaysia’s GDP). However, that doesn’t stop from him from continuing to excel while feeling worried and concerned.

This is that kind of attitude that needs to be emulated by Malaysia’s civil servants and ministers.

Full list of the new cabinet line-up