Favoritism in Promotion, says ZAM

Today (18 May 2007) I read in The Star Newspaper of a complaint by the Malaysian Minister of Information (Zainuddin Maidin, a.k.a. ZAM to Malaysians) that his Ministry practiced favoritism in staff promotion. I thought this was a bit weird because the complainant is Minister of his ministry, hence the top boss of the organization.

If there was favoritism in his ministry, he should be the one to be blamed for this ‘not-uncommon’ practice in government offices. Why should the civil servants be blamed for the fault? We all know that even the top civil servant in the ministry i.e. the Secretary General, is answerable to the minister. The minister should have dealt with the problem by calling up his Secretary-General during those weekly meetings and made known of his abhorrence of favoritism.

By announcing to the press that his ministry practices favoritism, he was giving the impression that the Secretary General of the Information Ministry is not answerable to the Minister of Information (ZAM himself). This I find most peculiar, because my knowledge of Malaysian administration tells me that the top boss any ministry is a minister. He, and no other, directs the top civil servant of his organization.

Favoritism is not unique to ZAM’s ministry. It is quite prevalent throughout the government’s administration—even in the private sector. A person who has been overlooked in a promotion exercise will invariably use ‘favoritism’ as one cause of his/her misfortune. It is easy to point fingers at this factor but it is very difficult to prove it conclusively.

Promotions are almost always based on subjective evaluations of performance by several levels of superiors. For example, an employee is first rated by his immediate superior on several dimensions, then by the next level of supervisor, who acts as a moderator. Sometimes peer evaluation is also used. Then based on these evaluations, the employee is awarded points on various aspects of his performance—such as his tangible work output and its quality, his relations with other colleagues, his attitude towards his organization, his potential for bigger tasks, etc.

In the news item that I picked up today, ZAM's Sec-Gen Datuk Siti Balkish Shariff is reported to have ‘vetoed’ (my own word) some of the ‘excellence’ awards recommended by the supervisors to selected staff members. This she did because she thought the staff was being awarded not based on proper merit, but based on ‘dirty’ favoritism. While this practice is to be abhorred, the Minister should clean up his organization first, before going public about it. The Malays call this as “membuka pekung di dada” – or washing dirty linen in public.