The Star Online: Nation
The Star Online: Nation |
- Banking on votes from the civil servants
- STPM results out on Monday
- Lahad Datu: Celebrate good news with our men in blue and green
| Banking on votes from the civil servants Posted: 12 Mar 2013 04:14 PM PDT ALTHOUGH more non-Malays are beginning to join the civil service, the fact that Malays make up the overwhelming majority of the 1.4 million-strong public sector remains. It is said that nearly every Malay family has someone either in the civil service or the uniformed services. Thus, the civil service is home to a sizeable percentage of voters. Therefore, their welfare and livelihood is a key priority of the Barisan Nasional Government which likes to project itself as its protector and benefactor. On the other hand, the Chinese and Indians predominate in the private sector as small businessmen, professionals and wage earners. They are largely cut off from the civil service. They have little clue how the civil servants, as a unified special interest group, think and respond in a crisis. This is the reason why some Chinese and Indian politicians and even some thoughtless Malays make insensitive remarks about the civil service and pay a price for their faux pas. The more seasoned politicians in Umno and other Barisan component parties managed to avoid making insensitive remarks, preferring to work with the civil service rather than against them. When civil servants die in the line of duty, Barisan gets all worked up. It immediately moves in to comfort and reassure them as it is mindful of the civil services' vote bank. When security personnel were killed by Sulu insurgents, the Government's game plan changed as well. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak ordered an all-out assault by a combined force of army and police personnel. Resources were rapidly mobilised, villagers told to move out and security forces encircled the red zone and the shooting war started in earnest. When Najib announced the decision to attack on March 5 at a gathering of religious leaders at Putra Stadium, he was given a standing ovation. The civil servants had rejoiced that the initial decision to negotiate was over and that the army and police were on attack mode. The Opposition, on the other hand, had fallen flat. They had failed to connect with the powerful emotional impact the crisis had on civil servants and the Malay voters. In fact, they committed a faux pas of the worst kind imaginable when PKR vice-president Tian Chua remarked that the Lahad Datu crisis was a sandiwara by Umno and Barisan Nasional. His remarks, published in Keadilan Daily on March 1, had riled up the Malay groups, including former servicemen, who vented their anger and demanded an apology and retraction. Not a day passes by without someone burning or stomping on pictures of Tian Chua and lodging a police report and urging stern action. At one anti-Tian Chua session, even former IGPs and former deputy IGPs were out condemning Tian Chua and rooting for the Malaysian security forces. The message out there is simple while the armed forces are risking their lives in protecting the country, Opposition politicians are playing politics. The civil service is sacrosanct, politically speaking. If you are a politician, you better think twice before speaking up against it. Former Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo had angered civil servants when he gave out a broom as an "award" to two underperforming local councils in Novem-ber 2007. While he wanted to improve the service, the civil servants saw it as demeaning and felt slighted. They took it out by spoiling their votes when the general election came, contributing to the fall of Barisan in Selangor. In more recent times December 2011 Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua was forced to eat humble pie after he announced that Pakatan Rakyat would slash the civil service by half, if it takes power. Pakatan leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had to step in and assure the civil servants that Pakatan would do no such thing if it is in power. Even Pua, who stands in an overwhelmingly Chinese seat, was forced to clarify that he did not mean "slash by half" but reduce its numbers through synergies. The civil service is overwhelmingly Malay and largely pro-Barisan, who is their protector and benefactor; although PAS and, to a lesser extent, PKR are making a dent. However, it is not big enough a dent for the supposedly neutral civil servants to change direction as yet. |
| Posted: 12 Mar 2013 04:13 PM PDT PETALING JAYA: The results for the 2012 Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM) will be announced on Monday. The Malaysian Examinations Council (MEC) said in a statement that candidates could obtain their results at their respective schools from noon that day, while private candidates would get theirs by post. Candidates can also check their results via SMS by typing "STPM RESULT The 2012 STPM examinations was the last to be held under the old format as the Education Ministry decided three years ago to revamp the examination format from having one final exam to include school-based assessments and assessments at the end of each semester. The MEC said candidates could obtain their 2013 STPM first semester results next Thursday via SMS or check the council's website. |
| Lahad Datu: Celebrate good news with our men in blue and green Posted: 12 Mar 2013 04:13 PM PDT IT is welcome news indeed. And all Malaysians will rejoice with the 102,000 police and nearly 132,000 armed forces personnel whose salaries are being revised upwards and streamlined with the pay scheme of the civil service. We are now seeing for ourselves, up close and personal, the heavy responsibilities that our security forces have to bear in carrying out their duties. While our security forces, especially the military, usually remain in the background, they are the first to rise up and defend our land when our country is threatened. And they have shown that they are always ready to do battle. Summoned at short notice, they will put their lives at risk to defend our safety and sovereignty. Sadly, our first soldier died in a gun battle yesterday in the on-going Ops Daulat in Sabah. It is similar for the police, who lost eight of their men fighting the armed intruders. But our support for their pay rise must not only be seen from this perspective. As the details of their salary scales are revealed, we surely can see for ourselves that our men in blue and green from the constable and the private, to the OCPDs and lieutenants are deserving of a pay rise. Just look at the minimum pay of all the ranks. Granted that our security forces are not motivated solely by monetary rewards, but we must always factor in the high risks involved for the OCPD leading his policemen to deal with social unrest, or a lieutenant-colonel commanding a battalion of soldiers into battle. And the risks are there even in less threatening situations, like a constable going after a band of car thieves or a company of soldiers called in to rescue people lost in the jungle. And when they fall, we grieve with their families, but we may not realise that the financial support for the surviving members of the family will be low if their salaries are low. These are the unseen, and under-appreciated, consequences of being trapped in a low-salary structure. Streamlining the pay scale for police and armed forces personnel with the civil service is also necessary to better reflect the rank held by a respective officer. With the revision, police officers from the ranks of lance corporal to assistant commissioner and lance corporal to colonel for the armed forces will see a marked hike in their salary scales. As Chief Secretary to the Government Datuk Seri Ali Hamsa explained, police officers and armed forces personnel previously had to wait to be promoted a few ranks higher before their salary scale is raised. Let us celebrate the good news together with our men in blue and green. And let us remind ourselves, as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak puts it, that: "It is through their commitment that we Malaysians can go about our daily business without worry or fear, that our children can safely go to school, and we can earn a living and at the end of the day go home to our loved ones." We must always remember that. |
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