It's incredible isn't it, how politicians make promises?

During the ‘new broom sweeps clean' season, last July, the official line was that "the success of the government and administration depended on the achievement of the National KPI".

Politicians then tripped over themselves making outrageous boasts that "the government was bold and confident to take a realistic approach so that objectives could be achieved".

Recently, the KPIs for the Cabinet were delayed for another month.

And nobody cared a fig.

Apparently, ten ministers failed to submit their reports. We expected this: ‘twas no big deal. Having been made immune by previous disappointments, we hardly registered this latest failure.

But then a few days later, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Koh Tsu Koon ( right ) denied reports that the ten ministers had missed the deadline. "There are no laggard ministers at all," he stressed.

NONE Idris Jala ( left ) waded in to reinforce this denial, "The report about missing the deadline is completely beyond me. It is not correct."

But the damage had been done. Without these denials, no one would have been any the wiser and we'd have overlooked the initial mistake.

By harping on it, we were drawn to the issue. This prelude, even before discussing the actual KPIs, has been damning.

Does anyone senior in the party realise how bad they look? Do they even comprehend what a mess we are in?

It is extremely galling when Koh then appeared to compliment these ministers with, "Even this, by any standard, is considered fast. If you ask the private sector, they take awhile".

NONE Sadly, Koh is wrong and out of his depth.

He may make excuses for the non-performance, incompetence and the inability of his colleagues to deliver, but he should NOT shoddily tar and make unfair criticisms about the private sector. It makes him appear irresponsible, and implicates him in a cover-up.

Meeting deadlines, is how companies gauge our approach to work, our application to specific tasks, or of working under pressure, or the ability to plan effectively and communicate well.

So when we, in the private sector, do not meet deadlines, we are reprimanded, or our bonuses cut, or we are downgraded, or given warning letters, or disciplined, possibly even sacked.

But these punitive measures are less evident in government.

Gross incompetence the norm

If the politicians needed further persuasion of the gravity of the situation, then a glaring failure of the ‘People First, Performance Now' slogan, can be simply demonstrated by the well-publicised and long-drawn out controversy with The Herald, Malaysia's Catholic newspaper.

After much hand-wringing, and many anxious moments and delays, Father Lawrence Andrew, the Herald's editor, revealed that he felt it prudent to collect the permit to print.

Apparently, the Home Affairs Ministry would have taken two weeks to post it. The RM800 fee had been paid in August. The Treasury only issued the receipt in December.

Two weeks to arrange delivery? No wonder Father Andrew collected the permit as a precaution. And five months to issue a receipt? Some performance that!

Needless to say, others can recount horror stories detailing their own experiences of government departments.

Consider this. If we delayed payment of our income tax, or business registration fee or land assessment fees, the consequences would be dire.

So why is it that this government tells us to ‘do as I say but not do as I do'?

There is a huge discrepancy between the rhetoric and actions of our politicians.

We are already aware that most of them lead lives that are divorced from the real world. Do they also speak a different language?

In their futile attempts to convince and persuade us, and efforts to shore up our confidence in them, the sensible thing would have been to positively reinforce the behaviour that they want to see continue.

Thus, the corollary would also be true; they would need to model the behaviour they want others to exhibit.

Love affair with acronyms

This government, as with previous ones, is continually bombarding us with jargon and abbreviations. At one time, we were famous for endless patriotic and nationalistic jingles. Now, we are bogged down with overused catch phrases that are both trite and meaningless - 1Malaysia, KPI, GTP, and NKRA among others.

If we are serious about fulfilling the aspirations of Malaysians, then why did the NKRA omit public health (comprising health care needs and accessibility to affordable or free health care)?

Also, with Malaysia's sizeable ageing population, some of whom may be unproductive or have urgent medical needs and social care, why was the elderly overlooked?

What about tackling the increasing numbers of unemployed youth, who possess neither skills nor qualifications and are not in education?

How about addressing the breakdown of the family unit?

Successive governments have invested heavily in various institutions over the years, but what is obvious, is that there is no commensurate improvement in the overall quality of the services provided.

This is because we are restrained by a dogma that rejects high achievement and high expectations. We are content with mediocrity instead of investing in excellence.

We all know what ails this country. And we don't have to keep repeating them with each change of government.

We have missed numerous opportunities to address the problems. But again, governments find it easier to treat the symptoms rather than the problem.

The NKRA is simply another public relation stunt spewing out more empty promises and a waste of public money. Do we need to reclassify those things that need sorting out, like crime, corruption, education etcetera, with an NKRA?

It is like convening a meeting just so another meeting can be arranged!

What needs to be done, urgently, is to go back to basics and correct the rot. Just knuckle down. Get busy.

To start with, we can discard the dead wood, and those whose performances are not just abysmal but also mediocre, indifferent and apathetic. A fish rots from the head down; so, let us start with the top.

It does look like we have lost our focus.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a non-conformist traditionalist from Perak, a bucket chemist and an armchair eco-warrior. In 'real-speak', this translates into that she comes from Ipoh, values change but respects culture, is a petroleum chemist and also an environmental pollution-control scientist.