POLITICIANS, by nature and inclination, are meddlesome. Don't take my word for it: talk to any high ranking public servant, and sooner or later, even without any prompting on your part, he will pour out his bleeding heart about the difficulty he is faced with in discharging his duties because of political interference from all directions.

I have little sympathy, naturally, for civil servants who pander to the megalomaniac tendencies of some of our honourable members.

I do, however, appreciate that in a civil service which had, in the last quarter of a century, been completely politicised and rendered shamelessly subservient to little tin gods of all political hues, it would require a public servant of outstanding moral and ethical character to stand up to interfering politicians and to tell them, politely but firmly, where to get off.

I recall berating some very senior heads of department on a course at the National Institute of Public Administration, where I was a guest lecturer, for allowing themselves to be browbeaten by their political masters into abandoning their professional principles of "public duty in the public interest" without fear or favour.

They, without a trace of guilt or shame, said almost in a chorus that how well they progressed in the civil service depended on political patronage.
One of them, I remember quite distinctly, mentioned transfers to "punishment stations", such as Gua Musang, for those considered professionally unyielding in their attitude.

Few politicians, including ministers, really bother to understand the extent of the powers vested in them under the law, and rarely, I am told, do they seek the advice or guidance of their top civil servants, with the result that much time is wasted in disentangling ministerial decisions often bordering on the ridiculously impractical or even illegal.

Some, believing that politics is the art of the possible, have tried to brush aside rules they regard as inconvenient.

Politicians often are surprised and upset when civil servants will not carry out their instructions, which are clearly legally unsupportable.

I am pleased that there are officers who will say to their ministers that if they insist on their instructions being implemented, would they please put them down in writing?

This bureaucratic ploy always works, so I am told. The case of a senior minister in the Eighties, who had a penchant for minuting his instructions to his underlings in pencil, for reasons we can only speculate, has now become part of our civil service folklore.

Civil servants must defend and guard jealously their rights in accordance with the rules and regulations governing their employment.

For them, the luxury of thinking that the rules are to be more honoured in the breach than the observance simply does not exist. They are required to comply with the rules that regulate their work.

To do otherwise would be to put their integrity and that of the service at very considerable risk, including most serious of all, the risk of the erosion of public confidence.

While the civil service is an integral part of the government of the day, and must justify its existence by ensuring that government policies are carried out efficiently in the interest of the people, it must steer clear of partisan politics and remain completely above it all.

Its justification, indeed the only one I can think of, is to serve the public with integrity and efficiency.

I am told that under the current administration, with a former senior public servant as prime minister, the civil service has regained some of its pride and confidence.

They are now allowed much greater freedom of action to perform their public duty without politicians breathing down their necks. They are beginning to enjoy making decisions again and taking responsibility for their actions.

From what I am able to judge, the service under the current chief secretary is looking very promising and there is every prospect of further improving service delivery. Civil servants, certainly those in the upper echelons, are much more motivated.

It would be a pity to destroy their newfound confidence and pride in their work if politicians were allowed to meddle in public service matters, as Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad did so effectively to compromise the integrity of many of our important national institutions.

The public service is still reeling from the excessive political interference of the Mahathir era.

Our frontline enforcement officers will tell you that their effectiveness is greatly reduced when opposition parliamentarians and state assemblymen and women stand in the way of their enforcing the law.

Local government officials are particularly vulnerable in this respect. Enforcement officers on demolition work of squatter settlements not only have to face angry squatters, but also abusive politicians who seem to believe that giving comfort and succour to law-breakers is part of their civic duty.

Enforcement officers are not obliged to take instructions from any unauthorised person, and they should not hesitate to act against anyone obstructing them in performing their duties. No one is above the law, and legislators have no more rights than anyone else under the law.

In my column last Sunday, I suggested introducing national military service to redress the racial imbalance in our police and armed forces.

Those under-represented ethnic groups that have been vocal about their rights will, I am sure, welcome this opportunity to exercise their inalienable rights to serve their country alongside other Malaysians. Maintaining the peace and security of our country must be a shared responsibility.

A retired Malaysian Armed Forces major of Chinese extraction, who served the nation with pride and loyalty, emails me to say that there is no better or more natural environment to integrate our diverse races and cultures than that of the armed services.

An 18-month stint would bring about greater understanding of other cultures and traditions. The major also tells me that never in his entire service did he feel in any way marginalised because he was from a minority race.

In 1952, the British colonial government introduced national service to meet the security needs of Malaya, then facing militant Communism.

I was disappointed to miss doing my bit for the country because I was a few months short of the minimum age.

Many of my classmates were "conscripted" - a large number of them Chinese and Indians - into the police jungle squads. One of them even won the George Medal, the highest civilian honour for exceptional courage (the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross).

I am sad to say, there were also some fair weather Malayans who took the slow boat to China, India and Ceylon to avoid the call-up.

When this was scrapped not long afterwards, a friend who had decamped to Ceylon returned, and was among the first to claim his "right" to a government overseas teacher training scholarship, which he took without any sense of shame.

For him it was not a case of what he could do for his country, but what the country could do for him. You have to admire a chap like that, and there are many in our midst in today's Malaysia.

The current garden-variety "national service" should be scrapped because it is not meeting the objective of integrating young people of this country, and it costs too much with little to show for it.

The writer is a former special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general on ethics. He can be contacted at tunkua@gmail.com.