I wish to refer to Kim Quek's letter Cabinet committees: Aiming for a world record?

Malaysia's political malaise starts from the very top in its federal administration with an oversized cabinet and down the line to the local councils with too many redundant councillors.

Malaysia is, by design or otherwise, entrenched in the realm of Parkinson's Law - that work expands to fill the time available, and the number of subordinates in an organisation will increase linearly regardless of the amount of work to be done. This Parkinson's Law was propounded by the 20th-century British scholar C Northcote Parkinson.

A comparison of the size of our cabinet with those of some countries, both developed and developing, will show how deeply Malaysia is entrenched in the Parkinson's Law.

With such a big cabinet, it is a mammoth task to hold an orderly meeting. With 33 members, discussions will drag on for hours before a decision is reached and little is achieved.

The result? More and more cabinet committees. The latest in the long series is the cabinet committee set up to address the pollution of rivers caused by landfills and other riverbank developments.

With an oversized cabinet, a cabinet committee is superfluous akin to a bunch of the unwilling, appointed by the unknowing, to do the unnecessary. As such, one does not expect much from such a committee.

A good example is the cabinet committee set up to investigate the AP issue and formulate a new National Automobile Policy, which has remained deafeningly silent after more than six months of deliberation.

The ineffectiveness of the Malaysian cabinet is to be expected for, as the saying goes, too many cooks spoil the broth.