Sunday July 19 2009;
By Leslie LauConsultant Editor
KUALA LUMPUR, July 14 – Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah criticised today the routine extension of service for top civil servants which he said creates cults of personality and promotes a cosy relationship between senior officers and their political masters.
“This politicises the leadership of a service that is supposed to promote by its own independent processes. Those extended become, in effect political appointees. This erodes the independence of the service as a whole.
“It is by an accumulation of bad practices like this that the independent ethos of the civil service has gradually been eroded by political masters who take the ‘master’ part rather too literally,” the Umno veteran wrote on his blog, today.
He said that the routine extension of service has resulted in a “log jam” all the way down the line. An extension for one person who ought to have retired, he said, was a “promotion freeze” for hundreds of others.
Extension of service is meant to be an extraordinary measure but is now in danger of becoming the norm, said the former finance minister.
“This is bad practice,” he said.
