Mahiaddin Md Yassin’s appointment as the Chairman of the National Recovery Council (MPN) with Ministerial status to oversee the implementation of the National Recovery Plan (NRP) is disappointing because it shows that new Prime Minister Ismail Sabri is not serious and committed to the NRP. Further this appointment is seen as a form of political consolation for Mahiaddin, after being forced to resign as Prime Minister.
In less than two weeks, Ismail has appointed as many Ministers and Deputy Ministers as Mahiaddin did in 17 months totalling 74, wasting public funds and resources that could be better utilised to employ contract doctors. Mahiaddin’s appointment with Ministerial status follows rapidly the appointment of 3 MPs as special envoys with Ministerial status, despite lacking any previous performance or qualification. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, appointing the very people who failed is worse when they could not even get it right the first time.
Clearly the NRP is just mere window dressing to mask the fact that the real decisions are made behind closed doors by a few powerful individuals hidden from the public eye without any regard for the deliberations of the NRP Council. By lightly dismissing public concerns that such appointments are political games in nature to shore up support for his parliamentary majority, without any benefit to resolving the COVID-19 and economic crisis, Ismail’s honeymoon is effectively over.
The NRP is supposed to be a roadmap to control the COVID-19 pandemic while progressively reopening society and the economy towards the new normal by December 2021. Due to its importance, the NRP has been chaired by the Prime Minister with members comprising all sectors to demonstrate the whole-of-society effort to win the battle against COVID-19 and pull the economy out of the recession.
The members are supposed to be political leaders from both the government and the opposition but also subject matter experts to craft an Economic Turnaround Plan and a National COVID-19 Reset Plan to move from containing or eliminating COVID-19 to mitigation and living with COVID-19. By appointing the former Prime Minister to chair the NRP instead of himself, Ismail is diminishing its importance and relegating its powers to just another ordinary committee.
Has Ismail Sabri run out of ideas so quickly after 2 weeks as Prime Minister that he must rely on the previously failed Prime Minister? Ismail runs the risk of being another Mahiaddin 2.0, the worst Prime Minister in Malaysian history that mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in a record 1,824,439 infections and 17,883 deaths on September 4 as well as the worst economic crisis in history. A recycled Cabinet and a Prime Minister that is no different from putting old wine in a new bottle will not help to save lives and livelihoods.