What's wrong with EPU and ICU?

Datuk Seri Effendi Norwawi apparently delivered a speech in the Senate last week during the 2009 Budget debate. The Star carried an excerpt from the speech entitled The Impact of this Global Financial Crisis on the Long Term Economic Development in this Country.

This is a passage that I quite liked since it advocates the need for a single command post to deal with the plethora of developmental issues; something this blog has advocated all along:

I would like to suggest setting up a comprehensive national strategic plan and an institution with the mechanism to implement the national mission. This mission, which was first announced at the launch of the Ninth Malaysia Plan in March 2006, outlined the country’s core development plan for the next 15 years.

To achieve this, we need to have a strategic national mission masterplan with a clear target and implementation schedule that also includes definitions and detailed measurements for all core missions.

This plan need to be understand, agreed upon, and implemented by all parties involved in the public and private sectors and the general population. The roles of ministries and agencies towards achieving the national mission need to be spelled out clearly in a plan.

The accountability and the responsibility of overseeing the whole project/plan must be optimised to move in a single direction. Existing sectorial strategic plans such as the Third Industrial Masterplan (International Trade and Industry Ministry), Education Development Masterplan (Education Ministry), the National Science and Technology 2 Plan (Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry), National Strategic Higher Education Plan (Higher Education Ministry) and the Third National Agricultural Plan (Agriculture Ministry) need to be incorporated into this strategic plan.

Each plan need to realise the goals of the National Mission Masterplan.

Anyway, I didn't know there were so many bloody Plans and Masterplans in this country!!! Sounds like we're really organised doesn't it?

The part of the speech that I didn't like was this:

A long- term plan such as Vision 2020 needs high level of commitment to realise. I would like to suggest the setting up of a National Development Council (the Malay acronym is MPN) to be chaired be the Prime Minister, as the platform to oversee the implementation of the national mission. This is to ensure every resource be optimised and coordinated to the best level.

Under MPN, I would like to suggest the setting up of a full-time “task force” (Direktorat Pembangunan Negara or DPN) to be manned by experts and professionals that can be formally institutionalised.

The directorate can be set up almost immediately by putting under it an existing institution, Malaysia Development Institute (MDI). Currently MDI is being tasked to plan the country’s strategic macro direction and do research on the national mission.

With a clear mandate and transparent accountability, this task force is answerable to the Prime Minsiter and MPN to come out with a strategic plan, coordinating programmes, and its implementation and day-to-day running of all intiatives that is being planned. The task force is the strategic planner and execution coordinator that will work with all ministries and agencies involved throughout the whole project.

I'll tell you why I don't like it.

Effendi is the former Minister in charge of the EPU and NEAC. He's telling us that it is necessary to create another NEAC-like body to do the work that EPU and ICU were set up to do since the time of Tun Razak.

Someone in the BN government, anyone, should tell the taxpaying rakyat why we still have the EPU and ICU when obviously Dr M thought they weren't good enough which was why he created the NEAC.

Now the ex-Minister for EPU (and ICU) and NEAC says lets create another acronymic agency with superpowers to do the job that EPU was created to do and, what NEAC failed to do. What does that say about his tenure as the Minister for those agencies?

Is it any wonder that Malaysians feel puzzled and perplexed all the time (and, people wonder why my brows are furrowed almost all the time)?

By omitting any mention of the EPU and NEAC, Effendi has indicted both agencies and his own tenure as Minister. In any case, why is the NEAC still around? By the way, isn't there supposed to be an Economic Council somewhere in the mix? Is the Economic Council the new NEAC (since they share the same Secretariat)? Where does that leave the EPU?

Effendi is the typical BN pol. He likes to build new things. He thinks maintaining is not cool. Shiny and new, that's the way. Old is boring, no way. This is classic Third World mentality isn't it? Build and build new things. Forget about maintaining. Forget about the foundations, just concentrate on the facade.

Maybe they should create another central coordinating agency answerable to the PM on why people are feeling angsty, lacking in confidence, ennui, aimless, moribund and, yes, a sense of malaise.