MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

What is a dato'ship worth?

When once it was honourable to be in power, today all around the world it is synonymous with corruption. As the quality of public life declines, those in power, having given up the ghost, find creative means to enrich themselves. Nowhere is this more blatant in this mania for honours and titles. No one talks about it, but corruption devalues the granting of this feudal perk. Once, the sultans blatantly put a price for one, once the carefully preserved feudal right become a political, more than a feudal, perk. Today, the business man who believes a title makes them respectable finds common cause with politicians prepared to sell the feudal soul to anyone willing to pay for it.

Who gets the money? In one state recently, from the backroom talk at a rehearsal before the honours were awarded, one man paid RM250,000: RM100,000 each for the MIC Emergency Relief Fund and one named UMNO division, the RM50,000 for the "runner" who made it happen. It is fair to assume he is an MIC nominee. The average is RM300,000. All fingers point to the mentri besar and chief minister and the BN apparatus in the state. PAS in the two states it controls attempts to right a debased system, with a large measure of success. The quotas to invidual parties in BN enables party leaders to sell titles. One was sued in court for not delivering, after collecting the money.

Twelve hundred and more are awarded titles annually in the 13 states. A tenth honour the titles they receive; the rest insist the titles honour them. This latter would, indeed must, pay, and do. Feudal respect in business, they believe, rises with every title bought. So it is not unusual for business men cronies of the establishment who are awarded every conceivable title from the states and the centre. One business man acquired one each for his two lawyers. Even in federal awards, corruption is present. An outgoing Yang Dipertuan Agung wanted to honour two prominent politicians from his state with Tan Sris. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, approved it, as he must, but a personal aide substituted his name for one, and a business man for another. An embarrased King who had to apologise to the two men. One has died since, the other is in the cabinet. The man who did the switch is a Tan Sri, and lives off his ill-gotten gains. The Prime Minister did nothing about it. In fact he encouraged this commerce when he created a new federal title of dato', which he then proceeded to dish out to all and sundry.

Dr Mahathir, in his quixotic and, so far, failed quest to rein in feudal practices and thinking, when about it as a bull in a china shop. He cheapened the award system by handed it out like souvenirs at a dinner. None of the business men he made Tan Sris honoured the title they received; almost all are in deep financial straits, nor would he entertain them to tea any more. As he went about, in typical Malaysian fashion, to dismantle the system without thought and for short-term gains, it threw it open to abuse. It enabled politicians, who believe they must amass, and lose, money beyond Croessus' greed, to sell honours with the dextrity with which they sell their souls. But the leaders themselves are first debased, with every state piling honours upon honours on the cabinet, whether it is derserved or not, and on the wives of the prime minister and deputy prime minister, and their families. It is not the sultans who do this but the state BN and UMNO. It is somehow seen improper for a cabinet minister to be satisfied with only one title. Nothing short of half a dozen, it seems, would do.

Curiously, the opposition is not considered worthy of awards. None are. Those with titles in the Opposition are those who defected from the ruling coalition, and those former Opposition grandees who defected the other way. The majority are for political services. Each party in the coalition has a quota: so it is not common for gardeners and drainsweepers to get awards because they hold some office in a party in the coalition. One political party collects hundreds of thousands of ringgit to any party member prepared to pay. It is not clear whether it is the president or the party that receives the funds. But the rot set in much earlier, when almost every state created new awards to meet the demands of those unworthy of respect who hoped a feudal title would make people change their minds about them.

The awards have become yet another means of controlling party members. Go against the president, and any chance one may have had of a title is gone for ever. Indeed, once non-Malays, if he is not entitled to it by his office, could only be nominated by party presidents. I know of only one instance where a mentri besar nominated the leader of the state opposition -- when the then mentri besar of Kedah, Tan Sri Sanusi Junid, did for the PAS leader, the late Dato' Fadhil Noor -- a choice the sultan happily concurred.

The rulers decided enough is enough, and moved sharply, if unobtrusively, to clean up the honours system. In Johore, where not so long ago the mentri besar and the sultan had separate lists, so that in year 101 dato'ships were awarded. His son acted swiftly to cut down the titles awarded, and with a strict regal eye, has brought the Johore datos' the respect it once had. In Kedah, the Sultan interviews each propsective dato' and many have come away without it. He has decided a dato' must be at least 45; one man who richly deserved it was told he would be given it two years later when he touched 45. In Kelantan and Trengganu, where the UMNO mentris besar ran riot with awarding it all and sundry, it is now firmly in the control of the palace. Even the state government can only recommend, but the final decision is the palace's. From these states, the newer datos are nearer the ideal of honouring the titles they are bestowed.

Dato'ships and other titles have become one more bauble to be acquired, as a second or third wife, to tell the world of their arrival. It has become, like the S class Mercedes or the BMW 740, that one must have once one is a crony. Few can resist the allure and respect that is vested in the titles, though many do not deserve it. But when it is common place, as here, it devalues it. I know of few crony business men who do not have titles. Many have half a dozen and more. Some, in their 20s, have two or three. One such is in court on assorted charges. Another is at bankruptcy's doors, but that did not prevent him from buying two Mercedes S 320s, one of which he promptly presented to the man instrumental in giving him his two titles. None have made a mark on society, using their dato'ships to force their way into a respectability they cannot achieve in five generations. Somehow a lorry driver or insurance agent thinks he is fit to sup with the high and mighty if they have a title to his name.

Ultimately, the value of a title depends on who receives it. Even when it awarded as a right. The Chief Justice becomes a Tun as a right of his office. But one, the late Tun Suffian, honours the award, while Tun Eusoff Chin, devalued it. Curiously, the difference between the two men reflects also the crisis in the Malaysian judiciary: the one so proper that he would not be seen with any one under any circumstances if he has to sit in a case involving him, the other so cavalier about justice that he sees no wrong in going on holidays with lawyers and business men who have cases before him. Ultimately, even the awards are devalued because society is.

Because men are prepared to pay as much as RM500,000 for the right to a title, and politicians see it as an easy way to enrich themselves, and political parties its war chest, this cannot be erased altogether. But no checks and balances exist, and the whole system of honours becomes another commodity that can be bought and sold. But there are still people who decline awards: The multi-billionaires ,Mr Robert Kuok, and Mr T. Anantha Krishnan, would not accept an award, but they remain as astute business men as many with titles are not; they are cash rich, in contrast to the many titled business men with billions in debt and, if the system was fairer than it is, made bankrupts.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my