COMMENT I think I have written on a number of occasions - should evidence ever come to light that prove any of my earlier positions wrong, I hope to be honest enough to admit it.

There has been talk of golden handshakes given to staffers of former Selangor menteri besar Khalid Ibrahim.

Black and white, incontrovertible evidence of the matter has yet to surface, and I will thus treat the matter as pending.

Upon cursory glance, even if the reports are true, there appears not to have been any criminal or illegal element. If the severance pay quantums are as large as rumoured however, there does exist a question of whether these payments were ethical.

Deciding what is ethical or not can be quite subjective, but we shall attempt to apply appropriate standards within the appropriate context.

The court of public opinion

Severance pay is a fairly normal practice. Given that it was untenable to expect key members of Khalid’s staff to continue to serve under the new menteri besar, I think it reasonable that these staff members were let go, and paid a severance package.

The question again is a matter of what the quantum of these packages were.

I have no experience or expert knowledge of standard practices in human resources locally, and thus am not an authority on what the average percentage or formula used to calculate an appropriate quantum might be.

I did the most basic of Google searches, that probably produced examples more common to American settings. From this very unscientific survey, a vague average appears to be in the region of a few weeks pay (typically based on last drawn salary) per year the employee served.

If this is an accurate corporate standard, then a formula that - for example - calculated in the order of months instead of weeks per year for example, would generally be considered excessive.

Technically, I suppose it is the prerogative of any company to determine its severance pay formula.

In the case of Selangor however, it must be noted that any funds belonging to a state government linked company (GLC) are generally considered to be public funds, whether or not this is technically 100 percent accurate.

Common perception would thus be that anyone benefitting from these funds are essentially benefiting from money that belongs to the people of Selangor. As with all things in democratic politics, at the end of the day, aside from what is technically legal or illegal, the court of public opinion matters.

Consistent standards

I have very often painted Khalid as a man with a fervent dedication to the strongest of ethics with regard to public spending. The ethos of his administration, which I admit to having helped paint, was one in which every sen of public funds was accounted for with the utmost diligence.

The high standard thus set compels us to apply those standards across the board.

With the talk that was talked, Khalid’s administration could reasonably be expected to take great care in ensuring that none of their actions could possibly be construed as self-serving.

Politics in Malaysia begs for a departure from relative morality. In this case, this means that arguments concerning how the severance packages constituted only a ‘small’ percentage of the company’s total funds do not seem relevant.

For example, if former Umno menteri besar Khir Toyo spent RM1.7 million in state funds to finance a Disneyland fun trip, then the improvement we’d expect is an elimination of using state funds to fund personal holidays, not a lowering of the budget for the same.

Transparency needed across the board

On the whole, I still believe Khalid and team did really great things for Selangor. In the time that I worked with them, I found his staffers to be dedicated, sincere and very reasonable. I count them as good friends, and in a purely corporate setting, the alleged severance package may even have been well deserved.

If these allegations are proven, I imagine many will say that this is proof that Khalid was corrupt. I do not subscribe to this point of view at all, and have seen nothing to make me change my earlier argument that the accusations used against Khalid to remove him from office were trumped up and unsupported by hard evidence.

On the whole however, perhaps Khalid could have adapted better to more modern demands of transparency and accountability.

I might still believe that Khalid is still my top choice amongst available politicians for individuals most suited to run things in Malaysia. A friend of mine said though, if these allegations regarding the severance packages are true, that distinction may not be worth as much as it was before.

I have taken a break from writing, and have chosen not to comment a great deal on the new administration in Selangor. I was reminded that if one has nothing nice to say, sometimes best not to say anything at all. So far, I stand by what I have written in the past.

Briefly, I personally do not expect any better from the present administration, and hope that any potential scandal surrounding the severance packages will not be used in a tit for tat horse trading scenario where each sides threatens to reveal things about the other. We have certainly had enough of this race to the bottom.

What would we have done?

During this break, I have been trying (with only limited success so far), to think on how to build towards a viable endgame, if I am correct in my assessments of the scenarios we presently face. I still believe we need a more significant break from our past in order to create a better future, but mapping that strategy out looks likely to be painstaking and complicated. That though, is no reason not to try.

I myself was never a salaried employee of the Selangor government or any of its subsidiaries. My company provided services on a contract basis, and I was never paid more than the monthly fee indicated in my contract, which was discontinued in late 2013.

The only people to have paid me or provided any benefit in connection with my writings on Selangor are Malaysiakini and The Ant Daily , per article, like any other contributor. I am grateful for their custom, and for the space they have very kindly provided.

As this story develops, I’m sure critics of Khalid and team will be gloating gleefully; we cannot control the actions of others, even if stones are being thrown in glass houses. I have been pondering however, whether myself - or any of us, really - would have had the moral strength to reject a massive severance package, if it were offered to us.

Moving forward, it seems clear that no matter who Malaysians put in power, there is an urgent need for more genuine transparency, and not more sophisticated shadow accounting. We will need to alter the rules of the game, and the ‘old way’ cultures, if we are to have any hope of building a better Malaysia.

NATHANIEL TAN truly enjoys the quiet.