MALAYSIANS' love-hate relationship with bureaucracy, especially departments collecting fees for services, is legendary.
Over the years, the civil service may have performed adequately in meeting citizens' broad expectations, but it is still soaked in mismanagement and corruption. Study an Auditor General's Report on any ministry, department or agency. Pick any year.
Nevertheless, this is what makes it tick: political administrations (four prime ministers since 2018 and perplexing ministerial shake-ups) come and go, but our civil service, built on the colonial legacy of British inventiveness that guarantees permanent tenure, from chief secretary to clerk, stays rock steady.
This is unlike the American federal government: each time a new president is elected, 4,000 new federal appointments are churned out.
Malaysians engage most pervasively with these departments: police, road transport, Immigration, registration, inland revenue, hospitals and public schools.
For their services, the departments charge and collect hundreds of millions, if not billions, in fees and fines. Essentially, they are the frontliners; their performance and public interaction present the matrix of government efficacy.
Here's a quick appraisal: police must burnish their reputation after revelations of commingling with gangsters and above-the-law indulgences, though they won plaudits for charging a deputy superintendent with the murder of a schoolboy motorcyclist.
The traffic police and the Road Transport Department have to step up to eliminate reckless driving, especially by commercial drivers, and illegal street racing.
The Immigration Department's bugbear is illegal immigrants, especially asylum seekers masking their economic refugee and fugitive status. While passport applications and renewals are now routinely administered, the alleged sale of under-the-counter Malaysian passports needs constant vigilance.
The National Registration Department has to fix the thorny issues of citizenship and statelessness, while plugging leakages in MyKad issuances, especially to questionable foreign characters. The Inland Revenue Board must maintain their heralded collection of tax revenue, needed to balance administrative expenditure and huge debt servicing. Because of generous health subsidies, government hospitals will always be thronged, especially by immigrants, so it's prudent to shorten the long wait and protracted dispute with doctors' contracts, given that medical expertise is depleting.
Short of an overhaul, schools need to beef up teaching of Science and Maths in English, refocus on academics, and lessen socio-religious activism. To a lesser degree, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission is battling its most difficult phase yet: taking down corrupt politicians, tycoons and senior bureaucrats.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission has to heighten patrolling of social media's plague of misinformation without compromising on free speech, and expunging hate, cybercrime and predators.
A caution to little Napoleons: restrain the sanctimony of policing how Malaysians dress, think and talk. Just do your job. Sensible Malaysians won't tolerate our pluralistic nation and all its beauty collapsing into a cesspit.