Civil Service Votes

A thought came into my head a few days ago, as I was taking my morning shower – “What if the civil service votes, swing?”

Our civil service has traditionally been a solid vote bank for the BN coalition. The generally held view is that the civil servants are a docile lot, with their saya yang menurut perintah mentality. As a rule, the civil service will vote for the government of the day and to protect their own jobs.

The PR coalition love to highlight the alleged abuses of power and corrupt practices that are carried out by many top BN leaders. Cow condominiums and unsinkable submarines are often the butt of many jokes in ceramah speeches. There is a wide perception by Malaysians that our government is corrupt.

What I thought about the other day was this – that the people who have a front-row seat in the corrupt practices are the civil servants. Most people who have never worked for the government before, have literally got no idea of how bad things are. Those working inside the belly of the beast have a much better idea on how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I am sure that there are a lot of people working for the government who are sick and tired of all the excesses.

However, the civil service has always obediently voted for the governing coalition. There are enough rumours of how those who vote against them are transferred to remote positions etc. Therefore, many do not vote according to their conscience but for expedience.

But what if the votes actually swung for once.

If there was ever a time for the civil service to swing, this would be it. There is sufficient momentum in the rest of the country that if the civil service votes swing, the BN coalition would end up being the opposition in parliament and the PR coalition would forever be in their debt.

What many people may not know is that there are actually a lot of PR supporters working for the government. In fact, while most senior leaders of the civil service are loyal party members of the BN coalition, the second line is full of those who are PR supporters.

More than half of my Law classmates work for the government in one way or another. Most of them are police and they openly tell us in class that while they know that the PR coalition would make a better government, they are forced to vote BN to protect their arse.

So, there is definitely a huge support for PR amongst the civil servants, even if it is not overt nor explicit.

But if this vote bank can be tapped, history would be made.