Respect and serve the governments of the day

Civil servants, be it from federal or state level are asked to respect and serve the government of the day. In the general elections, the people made their choice, the people voted in the government and therefore all civil servants must respect the people's choice and serve the elected government.

As civil servants, they must be neutral in their stand and not taking sides in any political or party disputes along the way. In this, they must perform professionally and not via political influence.

The case of the Penang state development officer (no need to mention his name at all), he had clearly shown his political align to Umno by supporting and attending to the party's requests. The SDO has been viewed by the general public as unprofessional in his stand and taking active side in politics. The actions carried out by the SDO has been seen as a kind of indiscipline and he had also breach the provisions as stated in the Federal Constitution.

Apart from that, the Penang SDO had also allowed himself to be instigated by the state Umno into rebelling against the state government in whatever policies and implementations. He also allowed himself to be instigated by Umno to issue a threat to the state government on the allocation of federal fundings. Why has he got the right to withhold federal fundings to the state?

Ever since after the last general election, Pakatan Rakyat had won over five states of which Perak's was later toppled by Umno in a coup d'etat a year later. And when Pakatan formed the government in these states, the Umno-led federal government had refused to deal directly with these Pakatan rule states, instead established state development offices in these states which function in a role like "de facto state governments" to rival the elected state governments.

Not only this, in the states' local administrative structures, the state governments appoint the village committees (JKKK) as well as headmen for various areas and districts. But when Pakatan took over these states and also took on the roles of appointing JKKK and headmen for the localities, the Umno-led federal government refused to recognize the existing roles of these state organs, instead appoint the federal village committee (JKKKP) to rival the state JKKK as well as the federal headmen to rival the state appointees.

In future, if Pakatan were to retain all these state governments in the next general election, is the federal government going to appoint the federal municipal councils to rival the local municipal councils. It shows that Umno and BN do not respect the people's choice at all. They are all still in a denial mode. By creating and duplicating state administrative structures and roles, they are in fact wasting the public funds.

Why can't all these Umno leaders accept the fact that the people had made their verdict known in the last general election and these states' powers were being taken away from them? Why can't they accept and respect the people's mandate and move on? They want to keep on politicking this and that almost daily in order to destabilize these people's elected state governments and to prevent them from governing the state in proper, threatening the voters and our population, inciting hatred, violence and racial tensions.

That is why Umno had initiated rebellion in Perak which they successfully toppled the state government there, attempted to rebel in Selangor but failed and now they are making another attempt in Penang which had also failed. Umno is committing political terrorism against the will of the people and our nation.