Of intellectualism in Malaysia and Sabah
Published on: Sunday, May 03, 2009
By: Nilakrishna James
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"Explain yourself," I said to him, as he barely took a breath from his 5-hour game of golf. He wiped his brow, took off his hat, sat down and took a long sip at his drink. After a pause, he was eager to talk and began by explaining the genesis of IDS.
Jeffrey is adamant in his claim that he is the initiator and brainchild behind IDS. The road towards the formation of the institute fell into two stages: Jeffrey's pre-US trip and his post-US trip. Before he left for the US, he recalled being summoned back from his studies in Australia (he was under the Colombo plan) and instructed to serve the State. He returned "with great expectations" only to be handed over a simple letter of appointment with no job specifications. His disappointment was overwhelming and he felt cheated and hurt. He turned the setback into a challenge.
"Each of us can deal with our shortcomings and answer our own questions. When the individual takes a problem and make it his own, he would seek his own solutions." Jeffrey went on to say, "We need the people to have the capacity to rely on themselves so that they are no longer vulnerable and can make their own choices. I later formed the People Development Foundation to focus on the people empowerment component to maximize the potential of the individual for we must be able to generate our own ideas to tackle our own problems and turn our resources and talents into earning potential." Jeffrey's earliest setback became his driving force for change. He realised that all natives like him could rise to their fullest potential.
In the late 70s and early 80s, under Usno and later Berjaya, Jeffrey recalled taking the initiative to turn an empty job portfolio into a determined effort to restructure the civil service. "I studied the civil service, mapped and charted out the organizational structure and found that it needed improvement to maximize government efficiencyÉ.For that, my Director assigned me as his 'special assistant' and eventually I was promoted to Assistant Director." Jeffrey was faced with many challenges. He was tasked with "management analysis" of the entire civil service and studied the roles of both legislative and executive, where he found that functions were overlapping, policies were vague or non-existent, and there was no clear direction to make things more coherent. To strengthen his research, he was sent to the UK for a few months to train as a management consultant. Upon his return, he set up the Sabah Administrative, Modernisation and Management Unit (SAMMU) to offer management consultancy services to the government. There were many changes he said. "We separated the Wildlife and Forestry Departments, created several sub-districts, wrote a report called 'Modernisation of District Administration' and produced the civil service handbook."
By the early 80s, there was a transitional phase that took SAMMU to SINAR, the Sabah Institute of Administration and Research, because of the training component of the unit. SINAR now focused on research, organizational plans and training of the civil service. Jeffrey was still tasked with doing intensive research into maximizing the efficiency of the civil service and their findings were turned into recommendations for Cabinet approval. According to Jeffrey, there was one issue in particular that turned his entire unit into an embarrassing situation for the Berjaya government.
"There was a car pooling system where every government department had to surrender their government vehicles on a daily basis to this one unit. It caused havoc in the civil service and their intention to paint the vehicles different colours according to different departments was a waste of money as all the cars already had the department's names on them. A meeting was called with the then Chief Minister (CM), top government officials and the media. I was bombarded with questions on this one issue which I thought were irrelevant to my report. So I asked the CM if he had even read the report. Every question in the end must have embarrassed the CM. My report angered those within the Car Pool unit."
Jeffrey told me that in the end the CM at the time said simply, "I want to close down your department." No reason was given except that the CM went on to say that "it was set up during the time I was not in Cabinet." Jeffrey paused and chuckled. "For trying to save the departments from being inefficient and to save money, our department was to be sacrificed. The CM's people saw the department as questioning policies and criticizing what they were doing. I refused to withdraw my stand and I recalled not a word was published in the press and I have yet to see the minutes of that meeting. But I anticipated all this and had already prepared to go on study leave. Two weeks after that, I was in the U.S."
SINAR, according to Jeffrey, was not closed down in the end and after he wrote a letter of apology to the CM, the CM replied graciously but felt that he was still right. Jeffrey smiled and said, "I wouldn't have expected otherwise."
I debated with Jeffrey on whether there's even room for intellectualism to flourish in Sabah. By the time he returned from the US, which he described as the second phase towards the establishment of the IDS, the Government had no idea where to put him because he was "overqualified for anything." Isn't that the perennial excuse for shutting out the best from the government I asked him? "Interesting you should say that", he says, "because I was sent to the Manpower Department and intellectuals were approaching me at the time and told me there were high positions in Yayasan Sabah but that they were told such positions were not for them as they were reserved for 'the cream of the Sabahans'."
With firm conviction in his own abilities and experiences, Jeffrey turned to me and asked, "Am I not a cream of the Sabahans?"
Jeffrey approached the late Tan Sri Ben Stephens, then Director of Yayasan Sabah, for a position reserved for the crme de la crme. "Surprisingly, despite my old tiff with the CM, I got the job," he said rather amused. "That's when I realized that Yayasan Sabah was all jumbled up. The commercial arm was running together with the social arm without clear demarcation, which made it very difficult for us to determine the performance of all the separate corporate entities within Yayasan Sabah. Ben Stephens gave me the authority to re-organise Yayasan Sabah. We separated the social arm which is the foundation and should not be subjected to tax, so that the commercial arm can run efficiently and be more accountable and they can donate to the social arm. I proposed the setting up of Innoprise."
Where everyone else took separate functions in either the commercial arm or the social arm of Yayasan Sabah, Jeffrey apparently was the only one who held portfolios in both arms. "We diversified a great deal and even had marketing arms in Hong Kong and Europe. Most of our commercial enterprises in Yayasan Sabah began to realise profits after the demarcation was made to separate the social unit.
It was at this time that Jeffrey saw the need to set up a policy making think tank. "At first it was called Institute of Public Policy Analysis (IPPA) and then we decided to call it IDS. I recruited many intellectuals from within and outside the civil service, most of whom were doctorate holders or with masters degrees."
The role of the IDS was to do research into various areas of importance in the overall economic and social development of Sabah and to present such findings to the government for eventual implementation. "We need to look into State rights and revenue sharing issues with the Federal Government. Most of what we did included studying the political system and political candidates, including the illegal immigrant issues. The original objective was to brainstorm policies for the good of the State. Now they've shifted to something more like operational management. We still need an overall body to address the real macro issues for example to understand Najib's 1Malaysia intention and how best to implement that in Sabah."
We digressed a little and discussed about the potential of tourism in the interior and the lack of focus on key products like Trusmadi. My Bingkor ancestry made all this relevant to me.
"Did you see a decline in IDS?" I asked him. "By now there should be a database with research findings, regular publications with statistics on everything which should be made available openly to the public which should be constantly monitored," he replied. Jeffrey wasn't about to point an accusing finger at IDS and provided instead what he felt were positive suggestions.
"Look at the new scenario in Sabah and project short term and long term development plans." I could sense his disappointment and wasn't quite sure what it was until he said, "Being the initiator and founder of the IDS, they should show more respect, despite my not being in government. It just seems to defeat the purpose of intellectual thought." I knew what he meant. Intellectuals should be above political bias, especially in a unit that prides itself on the higher faculty.
We talked of a 'yes man' culture that defeats the nature of intellectualism, because by nature it breeds silence and apathy and kills all mental innovation, especially within the civil service. "When you are silent, you are shutting your creativity and intellectual capacity becomes limited. You lose initiative. You are not challenged and there is no room for expression. The so-called educated group has become complacent to the powers that be."
I wondered how the opposition's take on meritocracy tally with intellectualism. Someone on the table brought up Marxism and Communism and said that intellectual thought is rife in communism but there is zero room for meritocracy.
I asked if it were not prudent to first nourish an intellectual base before embarking on a more ambitious project like meritocracy which makes Najib's call rather relevant? "Maybe", said Jeffrey, "although I don't think that you necessarily have to be an intellectual to recognize the good works of people. Take for example the civil service promotions, they may not have high qualifications but their output may be outstanding and that deserves recognition. You don't necessarily have to have formal education to think like an intellectual either; sometimes it's borne of experience. When we talk of meritocracy, intellectualism isn't a necessary prerequisite."
"We need meritocracy to create a more efficient system that would evolve into an intellectual society." Someone else added, "After all, the cavemen weren't necessarily intellectuals but with a proper system, society evolved."
I was keen to know how to go about finding intellectuals in Sabah as I find it almost impossible to believe that they would emerge so readily. It's a challenge surely for any government. Jeffrey felt that new technologies would provide a new base for intellectualism to flourish and that the Internet would be a valuable resource for intellectual expression. I mentioned the self-censorship of Malaysian intellectual blogs and how we could easily be flooded by frauds and plagiarism.
"To begin with," answered Jeffrey, "how do we allow the cohesive force of intellectualism to flourish if we police the resource of their communication networks?" Good point, I thought, and one for Rais to answer, not me.
"Some ideas, may be untested but it doesn't mean they are irrelevant." As his concluding words echoed in my mind on the drive back home, I thought of the many times I myself may have failed to take a challenge as a call for a great solution in my life.
It suddenly becomes irrelevant what anyone thinks of anyone because such barriers serve only to limit our own intellectual capacity.
* Lawyer, Human Rights and Environmental Activist, Cultural Board Director.
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