Five priority tasks for Abdullah Badawi to establish his mark as the new Deputy Prime Minister

(Petaling Jaya, Tuesday): Yesterday, I proposed five areas where Datuk Seri  Abdullah Ahmad  Badawi should give priority to give the  Home Ministry a human face and start the painful process to restore public confidence in the institutions of government.

I stressed that Abdullah should  provide leadership and stamp a new character and personality on the Home Ministry and not allow the various departments in the Home Ministry to  stamp their character and personality on him.

Yesterday, after his first briefing with the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad since his appointment as Deputy Prime Minister, Abdullah said the Prime Minister wanted departments under the Home Ministry to adopt a more people-friendly attitude.

This is as good as an  admission by Mahathir that the various departments in the Home Ministry lack a human face.  It would have been better if the Prime Minister had realised this in the 13 years he had been the Home Minister and had taken earlier action to stem  the slide of public confidence in various institutions of government.   It is now left to Abdullah as the new Home Minister to "humanise" the Home Ministry. I hope Abdullah  would take my five proposals on giving the Home Ministry a human face seriously and with a sense of urgency.

Today, I wish to propose five areas where Abdullah can stamp his  mark as the new  Deputy Prime Minister.

There is no doubt that as the fourth Deputy Prime Minister in the 18-year Mahathir administration, Abdullah  will come under great  pressures  as everybody would want to see whether he could break the jinx of the three previous Deputy Prime Ministers of Mahathir who were so near to the highest political post in the country but which became so far.

Many Barisan Nasional leaders have remarked that Badawi’s choice as Deputy Prime Minister was the reward for his "loyalty" to Mahathir.

But if "loyalty" is going to be Abdullah’s sole attribute as Deputy Prime Minister,  he will not be able  to live up to  the high expectations of Malaysians in the new No. 2 in the country and the surest way for Abdullah to disappoint Malaysians is for him to play safe and   become a pale shadow of Mahathir.

Abdullah must show that he has a vision of his own for the Malaysian  people and society, which  can inspire hope among the new generation of Malaysians.

In assuming his new appointment as  Deputy Prime Minister, Abdullah must introduce a fresh air in Malaysian governance and politics. There are five areas which Abdullah should give priority  to establish his mark as the Deputy Prime Minister, namely:
 

• Initiate a more consultative and participatory form of democracy, where there is respect for dissent whether from Opposition parties or  NGOs, which will be an important step to address the grave crisis of confidence afflicting the country and heal the deep wounds and divisions in the Malaysian society.
• Introduce Parliamentary reforms to restore meaning to the system of parliamentary democracy where Parliament becomes the highest legislative and political chamber of the land, and not just a rubber stamp of the Executive, and to uphold the doctrine of the separation of powers among the three branches of government, namely the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary.
• Protection and promotion of human rights in Malaysia. Although Abdullah had made his mark as Foreign Minister in the last eight years, his greatest failure in the Foreign Ministry is in the area of human rights, especially in an era where the protection and promotion of human rights is universally recognised as a legitimate concern of the international community.  It is a blot in the record of Abdullah as Foreign Minister that when the world celebrated 1998 as the International Human Rights Year on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, the Malaysian Government boycotted the celebrations.  As Deputy Prime Minister, Abdullah can now make amends by using his influence as the No. 2 in the government to ensure that internationally,  Malaysia ratify the International Covenant of  Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of  Social, Cultural and Economic Rights without any delay, while internally, Abdullah should work for the repeal of repressive laws like  the Internal Security Act.
• Spearhead a renewed campaign against corruption. The Anti-Corruption Agency has suddenly become an insignificant department when only 18 months ago, especially when Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was Acting Prime Minister in June/July 1987, the Anti-Corruption Agency became for the first time in its 40-year history as the most important and feared department in the country.
• Provide leadership for Malaysia to enter the new millennium as a world-class IT nation.  In the past year, the country has lost its sense of direction as far as its National IT Agenda is concerned, as evident in the most "unsmart" launching of the Smart School project, which is one of the seven flagship applications of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC).