Take Little Napoleons to task (Part 3)

WE FEEL this deleterious phenomenon is also well reflected in the history of "Chinese Etiquette and Ethics in Business" by Boye Lafayette De Mente. He writes: "... a bureaucracy that was rigid to the extreme, that it did not inspire or teach management ability on leadership, and the bureaucrats lacked any kind of practical experience, and instead of being outgoing and interested in really learning about the needs and interests of the people, most were opinionated, arrogant and dedicated to protecting their special privileges and the status quo."

They (the bureaucrats) simply direct rather than guide and consult. (We owe this judgment to HRH Raja Dr Nazrin Shah Raja Muda of Perak who gave a keynote address at the University of Malaya on August 13, 2007 which is excerpted here:

"They (the public) welcome and appreciate a government that is approachable and consultative, one that guides rather than one that directs. The system of governance must encourage the free flow of and easy access to information as the well-informed are in a better position to make informed decisions. When it has worked well, the result has been a developmental state..)

We would add: They decide on what they think rather than on what they understand.

They speculate rather than they give "first aid". They criminalise rather than they have empathy and advice. They are so obsessed with presumptions of applicants committing illegality rather than the national need for economic prosperity.

Their very own shortcomings, inefficiencies, lack of empathy are translated as the guilt of the applicants, who are painfully kept waiting for approvals indefinitely, almost to the point of insanity. But their bureaucratic invincibility deprives them of any sensitivity. Even the extreme analogy of a Hadith that a person who steals food while facing starvation is not to be punished according to the Syariah is to them a reason of futility.

The brief expositions related above reflect the perennial sufferings being endured by the private sectors in particular the entrepreneurs.

Though the details of the report of the Apec Economic Committee, chaired by Professor Bob Buckle, as was reported in your newspaper — "Apec report for policy reforms" (The Brunei Times, Sept 5, 2007) — is not yet known, we suspect the report deals with these bureaucratic shortcomings, inefficiencies, lack of empathy.

As we can glean, we quote thus: "It highlights the need for transparency, accountability, ethics, probity and good management systems in the public sector and explains why they are important for a well performing public sector and why that contributes to good economic performance in general and economic growth," said (Professor Bob) Buckle.

If our assumption of Prof Bob Buckle's statement is correct, then it is fair to adduce that what we have just briefly stated earlier above reflect our country's perennial sufferings at the hands of those overzealous bureaucrats as are evidenced by your various editorials, some of them are:

i "Public servants must become accountable" (July 12, 2006);

ii "Time to improve our civil service" (October 10, 2006);

iii "As the nation's gold mine youth need guidance and improvement" (October 18, 2006);

iv "Stronger Government backing needed for SMEs to flourish" (November 13, 2006);

v " Search for the right chemistry to hit it off." (November 17, 2006);

vi "So much effort money and time spent, but so little to show" (November 20, 2006);

vii "2006 challenge needs continued serious attention" (December 14, 2006);

viii "About time for us to change for the better" (December 18, 2006);

ix "Bureaucracy must help SMEs" (August 1, 2007);

x "Who is Bruneian" (August 14, 2007);

xi "Youngsters must change their mindset" (the direct relevant part is the penultimate para of your editorial, March 12, 2007); and,

xii "Never insult your parents" (July 30, 2007.

On our part, our rich, but sad experiences, would add the realism of flesh, blood and tears to your editorials and to those findings of the people in the academia. We could summarise some of the real causes and the consequent agonies, pains, sweat, tears and financial losses of those business risk-takers/entrepreneurs and their SMEs inflicted by those overzealous Little Napoleons' deleterious pathological elements, and their resultant adverse effect on the socio-economic progress of the country, as follows:

a. Almost all our civil servants are socially, culturally known to have innate aversion to business risk-taking; and racially have a strong propensity to seek "fixed-guaranteed income" (Please also see "Economic growth not fast says VC" (The Brunei Times, September 19,, 2007). We therefore have this built-in anti-business psyche "tak kenal maka tak cinta".

"Tak rasa maka tak bertimbang-rasa". "Deeply, simply: he who cannot love cannot understand" (Prof Tariq Ramadan, a leading Muslim scholar, St Arthur's College, Oxford). The phenomenon of "a wellfrog and the ocean, and a summer insect and the snow". This lack of vital supportive, empathetic institutional business culture is divisive and damaging. We live in one house, but this is mine, that is yours! This is basically one of the continued causes of the sufferings and financial losses of those entrepreneurs who suffer because of bureaucratic interminable deleterious elements. Any chasm always brings us down. At worst, we may get drowned.

(a-i) Whether you regard it as "fortunate" or "partiality", depending on the truth, and on which side you happen to be, the alleged cases of "nepotism", "expediency", and "inside connections", "if you know someone" or "find your saudara first" as mentioned in your editorials: "Who is a Bruneian", (The Brunei Times, August 14, 2007), and "Better public service in all sectors", (The Brunei Times, March 27, 2007), are not only unfair but really damaging to those helpless entrepreneurs/citizens who have no strings to pull, but instead got strangled. The helpless got prosecuted and criminalised! If this alleged inequitable situation does exist, is not this the mother of ironies that those who have "efficient inside connections" live in blessed satification, but those who do not have suffer painful persecutions?

This damaging situation being inflicted on those helpless entrepreneurs/citizens is also caused by what we summarise in (b) below.

These sufferings continue to happen in spite of what for example, Al Quran, Surah Al Mumtahanah, 60:Verse 8 reminds us that Allah (pbuh) commands kindness and justice to be shown amongst all kinds of communities and creeds, for Allah (pbuh) requires of men virtue, generosity and fair and kind treatment of the weaker members of society. And please ponder on this: "A realisation has dawned on me. Islam is a true embodiment of these five (basic human) values (truth, right conduct, non-violence, love and peace) having them in the five basic pillars of Islam." ("A non-Muslim experiences fast in Oman Sultanate"- The Brunei Times, September 17, 2007). These are in fact the pith of His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Dipertuan's titah: "Do not just serve, but serve people equally, says HM", (The Brunei Times, August 8, 2007).

(a-ii) So in spite of these religious imperatives and the titah, why do the hapless get prosecuted, those who have "efficient inside connections" get aided? If a non-Muslim has been able to fully appreciate these basic Islamic values, what has happened to the conscience of our own Little Napoleons? Those Little Napoleons may perversely feel that by having persecuted those helpless fledgling entrepreneurs, they have "won" their bureaucratic cause, "felt" they got praised. In fact they have destroyed the seeds of our national capacity and capabilities to generate socio-economic progress. They have acted contrary to the long standing encouragement of the government that the citizens must be self-reliant, to be self-employed, to create SMEs, not to burden the state with any means of dependency, or "crutch expectations". Begging is not only detested but it reflects a state's failure in its socio-economic execution. The survival of a country is vitally dependent on socio-economic progress, "People want economic development first and foremost." (Lee Kuan Yew, in the book "The Man and His Ideas" — Times Editions Pte Ltd).

Therefore it is our national imperative, utmost urgency that those Little Napoleons should be taken to task, be made accountable for having inflicted mental and financial pains on those hapless fledgling entrepreneurs by means of their (bureaucrats) deleterious elements.

( It is a national imperative that those bureaucrats must be tasked to digest, as a mandatory reading, a new book published in July 2007, titled "Dynamic Governance: Embedding Culture, Capabilities and Change in Singapore"a by Professors Boon Siong Neo and Geraldine Chen, Publisher: World Scientific.)

(b) The feeling of bureaucratic invincibility induces those Little Napoleons to be so overzealous in unilaterally, arbitrarily interpreting the laws in such a pin-point, exclusivist manner so as to finely weave their operational net in order to catch the "minnows", particularly the fledgling entrepreneurs who do not have "inside connections". For example their interpretation of "an amah" is that this amah must devote 100 per cent of her time, service and place to the holder of the passport in which the amah's name and job is endorsed.

Thus, according to those bureaucrats, it would be a criminal act if "amah Y" was asked by A, her employer, to help others, even his wife, his children and his infant grandchildren and their parents, let alone his siblings and others, even though all live in the same house under the extended family system!

How could those relevant authorities fairly and perfectly police this legal prohibition through out the country, in every house, is a scientific mystery and mental gymnastic. This is not a hypothetical situation, this is what those Immigration bureaucrats have asserted. There must be hundreds of foreign workers, amah, drivers, gardeners being asked to help others in cottage industries, in a gotong-royong spirit. When Hari Raya Aidil Fitri is just round the corner, there must be hundreds of employers and their foreign employees criss-crossing helping one another. How could this be illegalised? In whatever way we want to stretch our imagination to make this illogical, impractical, anti-religious, anti-social, anti-economic exclusivist interpretation reasonable logical, practical, and applicable to our long, well-established, civilised, socio-cultural-religious-economic-extended family-closely-knit-community convention.

This unilateral, arbitrary, exclusivist interperation of laws would be just totally destructive to our family value system, our gotong-royong convention, our adat-beristiadat-suka-duka, love and affection for our relatives, neighbours, our community and our nation.

Yang Dimuliakan Pehin Orang Kaya Lela Raja Dato Seri Laila Jasa Haji Awang Abdul Rahman bin Haji Awang Karim, DSLJ, PJK was formerly Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defence

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll We are running the discourse in full for the benefit of readers. Part 4 continues tomorrow.