'Major Cabinet reshuffle or no reshuffle at all' -- Ramon

Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS) and Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute (ASLI) head Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam said it was not enough to simply put in a few new faces, new methodologies should be adopted too.

“The country needs a Cabinet that is made up of full-fledged Malaysians who have totally Malaysian view of the future,” he told Astro AWANI.

Explaining what being ‘truly Malaysian’ was, Ramon said that the new Cabinet should discard old ideas such as raced-based policies that continue to slow down the country’s economic growth and income distribution.

“In short, it should adapt the New Economic Model (NEM) in all aspects and discard the old paradigm and the antiquated thinking that is causes major strains on the economy and disunity," he said, referring to the NEM introduced by Najib in 2010 but was later de-emphasised.

Ramon said other major issue that the government has failed to aggressively address are the perennial issue of cronyism and corruption, a lack of people who subscribe to true moderation.

“The public should be encouraged by the quality of new appointees and new postings and feel a greater sense of hopefulness and faith and confidence in Malaysia’s future development," he said.

Among other things, Ramon also suggested changes on these fronts:

LISTEN TO THE 'REPORT CARDS'

“We got the report cards. The Key Performance Indicators(KPI) for each ministry as it is a re-election of the ministers. Use that as a good indicator, which minister should be promoted and demoted and which should be replaced.

"But also take into the account all the rising criticisms from the public. Sometimes government highlights all the sweet things and brush issues under the carpet.

W'e have to learn to confront problems and take the bull by the horn. Religious bigotry, like the uneven application of the rule of law is something which will undermine us all. We have a child being kidnapped and police not doing anything. We have bodies being snatched from weddings and funerals.

"We have people like Ibrahim Ali talking about nobody doing anything. We have the late Karpal Singh charged and convicted of Sedition. All these things are making people lose trust in the country.”

“The Cabinet should not accept the concept of ‘the more the merrier’. We should go for quality and not quantity. We don’t need to be parochial, and have one minister in charge of one race. Yes, for MCA and Gerakan it is good to have Chinese representation but we should move away from racial quotas.

"Only when we approach things in silos that we need to put in Sabahans, Sarawakians and Chinese. We should increasingly become colour blind, race blind, just be just and fair to all. That’s why we have to move faster along that direction in the pursuit of moderation."

“We need fully elected Ministers who are fully answerable to the public. That is the basics of a democracy. A Cabinet made up of fully election representatives. Those who are not elected in Cabinet can be used to play other important or useful roles as advisors or heads of authorities, or department of statutory bodies. We don’t want politicians in those areas and they can replace the political appointees.

"You need good professionals there, like Datuk Paul Low and Datuk Seri Idris Jala. They actually find it difficult to be in Cabinet and they may not have the confidence like other ministers to act. Because they can always be told ‘you don’t have grassroot backing, you are not part of the democratic elected process, you have no locus standi in the Cabinet, please don’t talk too much.’”

It has been reported that Najib is considering a major overhaul of his administrative line-up aside from only having MCA president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and his Gerakan counterpart Datuk Mah Siew Keong in.