Local Government Elections and Decentralization of Governance
The first thing that both BN and PR had failed to mention in their respective manifestos are, the position of the Local Government Act. Our people has been looking forward for some sort of reform in this area because of current poor local governance, such as waste collections services; road and drainage systems, maintenance and its conditions; street lamps; too much hassles and bureaucracy; ineffective customer and general services; lack of improvement in local infrastructure and many more.
The BN side has not mention a single kind of reform on this area, therefore, we would assume they would not touch on this matter at all as their preference would be maintaining the current structure of having municipal presidents, mayors, municipal and city councillors appointed instead of putting these portions down to the electorate to decide.
As for the PR side, no doubt that one of the component parties, DAP has been fighting hard to have the Local Government Act abolished in order to pave way for the municipal and city council elections, the PR manifesto did not have a subject to specify that they would implement the local government elections if they were to come to power after GE13. In the last general elections (2008), all PR parties released the manifestos of their own (these PR component parties has yet to combine to establish an opposition coalition) and only DAP has emphasized on local government reform to allow local government elections to take place, while PKR and PAS has not mention these particular subject at all.
So, as far as we know, BN is not going to do anything at all to improve this area, while PR has not given their clear commitment in getting rid of this nuisance and dictatorial Local Government Act which is a major stagnant to the municipal and city council reforms.
The second one is, decentralization of governance to allow state government to have more powers and sayings in determining areas like local governance, civil service appointments, implementation of policies, land administrations, water treatment and supplies, public transportation services, waste management and a lot more which had a direct effect on its services to the people. The major challenge here is, because of the conflicts and contradictions in policies as well as implementations in both federal and state governments at large has been continuing since, it becomes a major burden to the well being our people.
Just take for instance, the continuous disruption of water supply in the state of Selangor because of the Syabas, a federal government-owned consortium who manages the water supplies in the state. Because the state government is a mere tiny shareholder of Syabas, it has no say whatsoever in its attempt to reform the management of Syabas in order to improve the water supply and management in the state which had indeed frustrated the people there.
The Penang state government had previously resisted the federal takeover of its water supply management and had since successfully managed its own water supply, thus turning it into the most profitable service in Malaysia.
The other thing is, the waste management which was previously under the direct jurisdiction of the state governments has became a federal-managed service undertaken by a few consortium which are appointed by the federal government. Most of the states, except for Selangor, Perak and Penang had given up their powers to manage this service to the federal government.
Public transportation service, this is another major problem which had remain unresolved until today. Right now, this particular area is being managed by these federal agencies, namely Commercial Vehicles Licensing Board (CVLB), Road Transport Department (JPJ) and the Public Land Transport Service Commission (SPAD). In many occasions, policies laid down by these federal agencies are very often contradicting, in conflict and duplicating. As such, it has created a mess out of it when coming to enforcement, licensing, services, adherence of regulations.
Because of all these problems, the state governments are not able to effectively resolve them when our people are complaining over the poor or disruption of service in the public transport which has been directly effecting their daily livelihood. As the result of the poor public transport services, our people have to resort to owning a car of their own, the number of vehicles on the road had definitely increased, in the end the traffic on the streets would be turn from bad to worst. Just look at the Selangor, Penang and Kuala Lumpur. Streets in the urban areas are jammed with vehicles almost everyday with no solution at all onto such situation.
The federal government can build more bridges, widen roads, build more highways, flyovers and tunnels, but these traffic jams will definitely continue if the public transportation service never improves and remains a major problem to our people and everyone of us would continue to utilize our own transport as a solution.
The other one is pertaining to the civil service in the state and the civil servants who are serving the state governments. Who are they serving, the state governments or the federal government? These civil servants are under the jurisdictions of the state governments or the federal government? Who should they take the orders from, the state governments or the federal governments? The situation here is rather confusing, conflicting and contradicting at all times.
The clear picture here is, all civil servants in this country, be they serving for the state or federal agencies and departments, are under the jurisdiction of the Public Service Department (JPA), a federal government department tasked to handle the appointment, transfers and remuneration of the civil service. Then, the JPA comes under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister's Department.
Because of the powers and management of the civil service are so centralized at the federal level, the state governments had no say or powers at all in determining or recommending civil servants for promotions, transfers or whatsoever. Very often, when a state government had wanted their preferred candidates to be appointed into some state level positions, the JPA would provide their choice of candidates instead to take on the said state positions. Same goes to the managing of local governments, where in the case of some implementations of the state government were to be carried out at the municipal level, the council president or the mayor would suddenly be transferred away from their positions, thus putting all the state government implementations and policies at the local level to a standstill pending a new appointment from the JPA.
The state governments will have no choice but to wait for a new arrival from the JPA's list because these state governments are powerless in deciding on who or when to retain, transfer or to rotate these state civil servants for specific projects, expertise or services within their administrations. The fact that is, there are no laws or regulations at the state level that can empower the state governments to over-write whatsoever decisions that has been laid out by the JPA.
Just look at what happened to Selangor previously, both state government and the JPA has their candidates put forward to take on the position of state secretary. A municipal council president was suddenly transferred out of the state after he supported the implementation of a policy laid out by the state government. Same goes to Penang, the state has been experiencing some immediate or un-notified transfers of its state civil servants in and out of the state quite too often until it affected some of the state's policy implementations.
These highlights mentioned herein are only some major examples of what has been going on and affecting our people's everyday cores and well beings. We knew that there are also other issues, highlights and challenges as the results of the current stature of the local government and the centralized governance which are also affecting our people but in order to change or enhance the entire situation, we should first look at the major one first, that is the core subjects at the high level leading down to the lower structures.
In determining on whether all these changes or enhancement should take place, our people should then use their wisdom to decide on who to vote for in the coming GE13. The fate of the people themselves and the nation would depend solely on who they will vote for.
