Datukships: Why the rush?

IN a country with the most number of people having honorific titles in the world, perhaps the big news story this past week has been the awards of honorific titles conferred on so many federal and state ministers barely five months after the new Pakatan Harapan (PH) government came into power.
Penang started the ball rolling by awarding a Datukship to a Cabinet minister barely two months after his appointment.
Then, earlier this month, four PH representatives in the Sabah state Cabinet – one from PKR and three from DAP – were also awarded the Datuk title.
And last week, five more ministers and three deputy ministers became Datuk Seri and Datuk, this time from Malacca, a state which this year alone came out with a whopping 102 Datukships.
Public reactions, especially on social media and WhatsApp groups, have been critical and many are questioning the states that have so far been dishing out these awards: why the hurry?
These recipients have hardly settled down in their jobs or made any impact in executing the onerous tasks assigned to them and yet they are bestowed with such titles.
This led veteran journalist Datuk A. Kadir Jasin to describe in his latest blog posting that the decision by the five ministers to accept the titles from Malacca as "not a smart one".
"The Pakatan Harapan government does not deserve to receive any honorific titles as it is less than a year old and has yet to fulfil the high expectations of the people.
"This (acceptance of the honorific titles) gives the impression that there is no difference between the PH ministers and the bigwigs in the Barisan Nasional (BN) government who were crazy for positions, titles and riches," said Kadir, who is media adviser to the prime minister.
He also noted that people are disgusted and the debate on social media clearly shows that the majority of them do not agree and "feel nauseated".
And it is very interesting to note that even Malacca Chief Minister Adly Zahari personally declined to accept the Datuk Seri title that traditionally goes with the office from Yang di-Pertua Negri Tun Mohd Yaakob.
This is definitely the first time ever that a chief minister or mentri besar has shunned such an award.
An insider in Malacca told me that another Cabinet minister, who is head of one of the PH parties, also declined to accept the Datuk Seri title.
It's obvious that these two gentlemen feel that it's too premature to think about getting honorific titles as they have other priorities.
With so many people getting awards from all the over country, many netizens can't help saying that such awards have grossly devalued with quantity overwhelming quality.
But it was the DAP recipients of these awards who have come under fire from party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng.
This is because they have clearly gone against the party's stand that they should not accept such awards while on active political service. This means they can only receive titles and awards after retiring from active service.
"Show the rakyat that DAP is different from Barisan Nasional. Place more importance on servicing the rakyat," said Lim, who is also finance minister.
He disagreed with the notion that declining such an award would be deemed as disrespectful or rude to the award giver, saying that it's important for party integrity that members are not after positions.
Lim cited as a classic example the late Tun Ghafar Baba, who only accepted the Tun title, the nation's highest award, after he retired.
Tun Ghafar was MP for 49 years and deputy prime minister for seven years.
Another example I can mention here is former youth and sports minister Khairy Jamaluddin, whom I'm sure must have been offered Datukships from several sources but he remained the sole minister without the Datuk title in the previous BN Cabinet under Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak.
In this regard, the DAP central executive committee will meet later this week to discuss members who have accepted the titles.
We can expect this meeting to be a heated affair as there would be some who would argue that once they leave active political service they might be forgotten and party leaders would miss out completely.
Like all things, there are pros and cons but one thing that's beyond argument is that it's far too early for such titular recognitions.
DAP organising secretary Anthony Loke has also criticised these party leaders by saying those who try to justify receiving an award without informing or awaiting directives from the party leadership have no respect for the party.
He said a written advisory would be issued to all elected representatives and local councillors to reiterate the party's stand on not receiving titles and awards during active service.
To be fair, it's also wise for other states that are coming out with their award lists in the coming months to tone down their over-zealousness in the matter.
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