SCwatch

The slew of announcements by Najib in his first 100 days in office as Prime Minister appears to have been well received the world over.  News portals like Malaysian Mirror, Malaysian Insider or even Malaysiakini constantly report about Najib’s goodies which seem to have improved his approval ratings. 

My view is that Najib’s first 100 days  that fell on 11 July 2009 had been well choreographed from the start. For example, his announcement of  another round of goodies on his 100th day as PM (11 July) was made at 11.11am and comprised 11 people-friendly measures! Need we say more. It is no wonder that he surrounds himself with the likes of “Fourth Floor Boys” like Razak Baginda and Omar Ong who can spew all sorts of ideas, concepts, spins ……  you name it, and they’ve got it. Remember the tag line, “Work with me, not for me”? Gosh, it also got me hooked for a time! Silly me!

But let’s be fair to Najib. As the saying goes, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” i.e. is Najib going to walk the talk?

When Mahathir came into office in 1981, he announced so many changes under his “Cekap, Bersih & Amanah” (Efficient, Clean & Trustworthy) mantra in order to counter the Opposition’s (Lim Kit Siang’s) criticism of corruption and nepotism in Malaysia. Didn’t work, did it? As mentioned by many, it is in the implementation that is going to prove crucial in the fruition of any policy change. Look at the “My Second Home” and “Reverse Brain Drain” programmes that were previously administered. They were abysmal failures because the implementators were sleeping at the switch or “just did not want to switch it on”!

Maybe for Najib’s recent announcements, we should observe closely how his scrapping of the 30% Bumiputera requirement policy will really be implemented. Already there is widespread scepticism that this change was only done in form especially with the establishment of Equity Nasional (Equinas). Equinas is believed by many to be the new vehicle to perpetuate the Bumiputera policy at the expense of the nation.

A related Najib policy change was the awarding of educational scholarships that will be based on meritocracy! Scepticism is rampant … just to give an example of what they might do in form instead of substance: Yes, award scholarships to the best brains irrespective of race. But then the implementors get to define what is “excellent results”. After doing that, they will allocate the scholarships which (surprise, surprise) comprises a majority of one race. This actually happened at an agency recently.

That is the irony of the implementation of policies like this. It gets so convoluted especially when these agencies are helmed by sufficiently pliant little Napoleons and Napoleonettes!

So will the Najib message be filtered down the ranks ….. maybe I should re-phrase that …. will the message be filtered and implemented down the ranks in form AND substance?