For decades, the parasites have been leaching off people’s hard-earned money because they were part of a group called “political appointees”. They were everywhere – companies under the Minister of Finance Incorporated (MoF Inc), government-linked companies (GLCs), government-linked investment companies (GLICs), statutory bodies, listed and unlisted companies, and even universities.

Exactly how many appointees are there? During unelected PM Ismail Sabri’s 14-month administration (Aug 2021 – Oct 2022), there were 234 political appointments, comprising 119 new appointments and 115 inherited from backdoor PM Muhyiddin Yassin’s 17-month regime. UMNO politicians dominated the most of such appointments, followed by Bersatu and PAS.

The wasteful political appointments were meant to secure the support of MPs for the fragile Perikatan Nasional backdoor government. After Muhyiddin snatched power via a political coup in March 2020, not only he created a bloated Cabinet of 70 ministers and deputy ministers to reward 114 MPs, but also to bribe them with special envoys, chairmanship and directorship.

But there’s a new sheriff in town. Newly crowned Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has decided to end the tenures of chairmen and board members who got their cushy jobs through political appointments. While there were some appointees who were considered competent in their jobs, it’s difficult and time-consuming to filter them. The cleanest way is to end all political appointments.

To promote transparency and to start afresh, the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia would use his discretionary power to make new appointments. This will allow the public to scrutinize each new political appointee to ensure only competent and experienced people are elevated to such jobs. The new unity government, therefore, must justify the new appointments to prevent wastage and corruption.

The most wasteful and useless political appointee was arguably the infamous appointment of Islamist party PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang as Special Envoy to the Middle East with ministerial rank. The religious extremist was rewarded by Mahiaddin in April 2020, shortly after the backdoor prime minister had betrayed democratically elected Pakatan Harapan government.

After Hadi’s appointment as the special envoy, his Islamist party quickly announced that all its MPs (Members of Parliament) who did not hold positions in the government will be made chiefs of GLCs (government linked companies). Not to be outdone, UMNO president Zahid Hamidi had similarly pressed for more positions as both leaders raced to grab the lucrative jobs.

Yet, hilariously, Special Envoy Hadi could not follow PM Mahiaddin (Muhyiddin) during a four-day official visit to Arabia in March 2021. The PM could not bring him along because Saudi Arabia and its allies (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt) considered Hadi Awang as a terrorist. The PAS supremo was banned from entering the kingdom of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.

Yes, PAS president Hadi Awang is a “terrorist” by virtue of him as one of the four vice-presidents of Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), an organization which Saudi, the de-facto leader of the Middle East, has banned and categorised as a “terrorist organization”. Without a visa, obviously he would not be able to clear the Saudi immigration.

It’s one thing to pay RM27,227.20 monthly, on top of other perks such as handphones, official vehicles, drivers and office spaces, not to mention another RM48,000 in monthly salary expenses on staff assigned to the offices of each special envoy. It’s another thing altogether to see Malaysia being laughed because its Special Envoy to the Middle East cannot step foot in the Middle East.

Another comical case was the appointment of UMNO warlord Tajuddin Abdul Rahman as chairman of Prasarana Malaysia Bhd in May 2020. He was sacked a year later in May 2021 after making a joke about a collision between two LRT trains that saw 213 passengers injured and at least 47 severely hurt – the worst disaster in the history of LRT since its operations started in 1996.

The clueless head of the GLC was not only late in his response to the national crisis, but made silly joke that it was merely two trains “kissing” each other. A supporter of former prime ministers Najib Razak and Ismail Sabri, Tajuddin was known for his thuggish behaviour and foul mouth. He got the job clearly due to his political connection rather than his competency.

When scandal-plagued or rejected pro-government politicians cannot be rewarded anymore to serve in the country, another favourite option practiced by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) was to appoint them as ambassadors. And that was precisely what PM Ismail Sabri had tried to do in order to maintain his fragile, un-elected government, with only 114 MPs in the 222-seat Parliament.

Sabri, who took over after traitor Muhyiddin was toppled in August 2021, had tried to promote loyalists Nazri Aziz and Tajuddin as ambassadors to Switzerland and Indonesia respectively. However, “turtle-egg” Sabri was humiliated after both UMNO leaders were “rejected” by the Swiss and Indonesian governments, who refused to accept toxic political appointees to their countries.

The speculation of Nazri being considered an ambassador job started flying as early as September 2021. Mr Nazri, who last served as the tourism minister, had been looking forward to the posh job in Switzerland after he proudly told all and sundry in June 2021 that he was going overseas for a 2 months holiday and to enrol his 5-year-old son to study in France.

During Najib administration, the PM appointed his best friend Jamaluddin Jarjis as Malaysian Ambassador to the United States in July 2009 after he sexually harassed a female worker of a restaurant at a five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur. The former Science, Technology and Innovation Minister was said to have grabbed the woman’s buttocks and expressed some sexual remarks.

The actual number of political appointees might be shockingly high. After former PM Mahathir Mohamad led opposition Pakatan Harapan to a stunning victory in the 2018 General Election, it was revealed that there was a whopping 17,000 political appointees, thanks to Barisan Nasional government that ruled for 61 years since independence in 1957.

Despite expressing desire to terminate the 17,000 political appointees, Mahathir said at the same time that some might be reassigned to other tasks instead. There was also flip-flop when Mahathir said action will only be taken against those who are suspected of wrong-doing. After Pakatan Harapan prematurely lost power after 22 months, it was back to business as usual.

Hence, the number of political appointees could still remain at 17,000 till today. For example, UMNO warlord Noh Omar was appointed chairman of Perbadanan Usahawan Nasional Bhd and Barisan Nasional’s Rawisandran Narayanan was appointed Tenaga Nasional Bhd’s independent and non-Executive Directors. MCA secretary-general Chong Sin Woon was appointed Port Klang Authority (PKA) chairman in April 2020.

Within the Labuan Port Authority (LPA) alone, MCA leader Chin Hong Vui was appointed deputy chairman while MIC leader P Kamalanathan as chairman. PAS leader Nasruddin Hassan Tantawi was named as chairman of the Islamic Propagation Foundation of Malaysia. Do you know Ismail Sabri is chairman and Azmin Ali is a director of Khazanah Nasional Berhad (KNB) till today?

Yes, Azmin, the most hated traitor who led 11 PKR MPs to betray Pakatan Harapan, leading to the collapse of the government, remains a director on the board of Khazanah ever since he was appointed by Mahathir in July 2018. By default, PM Anwar Ibrahim should be the chairman of KNB, not former PM Ismail Sabri. That explains the blanket termination of all chairmen and board members – it was so messy.

Political appointees are not restricted to full-time politicians though. Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz, former CEO of Malaysian banking group CIMB, is a classic example of political appointee handpicked and promoted by Muhyiddin as the Minister of Finance in March 2020. He has been appointed as the Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI) under the Anwar administration due to his royal connection.

Born with a silver spoon, Zafrul, thanks to his marriage to the great granddaughter to the fifth Sultan of Selangor, managed to climb up the corporate ladder due to his royal title “Tengku”. Worse, Zafrul was linked to Muhyiddin’s family. Apparently, his younger brother, Tengku Zuhri Tengku Abdul Aziz, is married to Fara Nadia Abd Rahim, whose elder sister Fara Ikma Abd Rahim is married to Muhyiddin’s eldest son Fakhri Yassin.

But Zafrul is also infamous for being the superstar singer in a music video for Najib’s 2018 Election Campaign. Instead of running the bank, Zafrul was one of 53 Chief Executives of GLCs (government-linked companies) who had shamelessly sung songs of praise for former PM Najib Razak, the crook who had misappropriated at least US$4.5 billion from 1MDB sovereign funds.

Shazalli Ramly, formerly CEO of Telekom Malaysia, was paid a monthly salary to the tune of RM300,000 – excluding other mouth-watering perks, allowances and other director fees (ranging from  RM5,000 to RM35,000 a meeting). He was reportedly the chief architect of the “Hebat Negaraku” music video dedicated to worship Najib and Barisan Nasional election campaign.

All political appointees were paid 5-figure salaries, excluding other perks. Assuming each is conservatively paid RM20,000 per month, it would cost the country a whopping RM340 million every month – or RM4 billion every year – for the 17,000 political appointees. Even half of those parasites would make the country RM2 billion poorer every year, money that could better used to subsidize chicken eggs instead.

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