COMMENT | Malaysia is experiencing another pandemic-era political transition, the second in 18 months. Right now, it is not useful to debate the legacy of the previous prime minister. Instead, we must focus our attention on the right quality of public administration and leadership that we need.

Removing any prime minister or cabinet does not guarantee a magic overnight solution to Malaysia’s pandemic problems. Our problems will continue if the new PM appoints an ineffective cabinet in this fight for our lives.

Therefore, we should focus on the why and how to appoint a competent, effective and professional pandemic cabinet for Malaysia. It is in a FAQ format because there is a large amount of information to process.

Why is a competent cabinet important to health professionals?

Medicine, public health and public policy all require a science and evidence-based framework. However, medicine, public health or public policy does not exist in a vacuum. In the real world, political and public administration decisions severely affect the health of Malaysians. And health is too important, too big and too complex to be left only to the Health Ministry.

This pandemic has repeatedly shown that other ministries are as important to health (like finance, home affairs, or local government). Therefore, all health professionals have a great interest in the composition of the cabinet, as it affects their daily work as professionals and rights as citizens, voters and taxpayers.

Why are cabinet ministers so important? Aren’t senior civil servants enough to handle a government?

It’s true that senior bureaucrats (like the chief secretary to the government, secretaries-general and directors-general) lead the entire civil service and ensure that government continues to operate. However, there are three reasons why cabinet ministers are equally important...