While some public servants shine, others deserve a comedy award

Senior lawyer Megat Shaharuddin Merican recounts encounters with public bodies whose rigid decisions and questionable interpretations left him wondering whether incompetence sometimes deserves recognition of its own.

Nations regularly celebrate their heroes. We shower media attention on athletic champions, brilliant academics, brave personnel in the security services, tireless healthcare workers and many others.

We even reserve a tiny, sceptical slice of praise for that rarest of anomalies: the honest politician who appears to be on the brink of extinction.

In contrast, we almost always forget to honour the quiet, unsung heroes who are the real bedrock of every tenured administration – the army of civil servants who constantly ensure that, however valiantly incompetent and corrupt our politicians can and will be, they will always be there to punctually remind members of the public that we have outstanding taxes of every kind to be paid under penalty of some form of pleasurable incarceration.

This is my humble attempt at redressing that silent gap, seen from my perspective as an estate lawyer with nearly three decades of practice.

On that note, there are a few categories of civil servants that come to mind, and the order in which they are narrated is not an indication of my preference, for they are all at par in excellence. I will, however, confine my observations to just three bodies.

The first is the District and Land Office of Hulu Langat. Lawyers who regularly present documents there will know that there are some exceptional officers who go beyond the call of duty when processing land transfers.

They do not just need to understand what those documents are; they insist, for example, that copies of the MyKad used as supporting documents must be the exact size of the original. Two millimetres off, and the entire set of presentation documents will be rejected – something I have experienced in the past.

However upsetting that may be, what many lawyers fail to understand is that these officers adopt the same precision standards as German engineers, which in turn demand that it is not just the contents of documents that matter, but the form as well. Surely, this is something to be lauded.

The second is the Inland Revenue Board (IRB). Sometime last year, I attended a Forum on Conveyancing hosted by the Selangor Bar, where representatives from the IRB and the Director of Lands and Mines of Selangor were invited.

During question time, I took the opportunity to ask why the IRB did not recognise the courts as forming part of government within the definition of paragraph 16 of Schedule 2 of the Real Property Gains Tax Act 1976 (Act 169).

I believe I framed my query on the basis that even the Federal Court had ruled that the courts form the third branch of government (see Semenyih Jaya Sdn Bhd v Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Hulu Langat and another case [2017] 3 MLJ 561).

With confidence, the IRB representative mentioned that they did not accept the Federal Court’s definition but strictly followed the definition given by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the federal statutory body tasked with standardising the Malay language.

How could I forget that, in terms of government structure, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka sits just above Malaysia’s apex court? I felt really embarrassed before a packed audience that I had to be correctly schooled and put in my place by that revelation. It clearly proves that even after nearly 30 years in practice, I still have much to learn.

The third is the Power of Attorney Division in Kuala Lumpur, which is charged with the registration and revocation of Powers of Attorney within the Federal Territory.

Some months back, I was required to revoke a Power of Attorney given by the deceased to a local bank during her lifetime, an exercise undertaken subsequent to the settlement of the deceased’s loan by a trustee company empowered to administer her estate via a Grant of Letters of Administration (LA) issued by the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

In presenting the revocation at the Division, I furnished a copy of the original Power of Attorney, the original Revocation of Power of Attorney duly executed by the bank in question and the trustee company and stamped, the duplicate thereof, and a copy of the LA, which already had the High Court QR security feature printed on it.

My presentation was rejected, principally because the Division insisted that the LA had to be certified true by the High Court.

I called the Senior Assistant Registrar assigned there and expressed my puzzlement as to why the LA was required to be certified true despite the document having the High Court QR security feature.

Her response was firm – it’s their policy. No amount of explanation about how farcical it was could move her. This is what I call unwavering conviction. To avoid unnecessary delay, I acceded to her direction.

Sometime thereafter, I discovered that on June 30, 2020, the Office of the Chief Registrar of the Federal Court of Malaysia issued a press statement directed at the general public and the 22 court branches in Peninsular Malaysia – which include the Division in question – on the need to accept court documents with the QR code security feature without more.

I can only reasonably conclude that, despite the clarity of that June 30 press statement, the Division, as with Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, sits above Malaysia’s apex court and is therefore not bound by it.

It is for the narration given that I propose these bodies deserve some public recognition, as per the captioned title.

Truly, we are all in good hands. Granted, we may have questionable politicians, but for as long as we have civil servants with unshakeable convictions like the three mentioned here, our future remains promising.

The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not represent those of Twentytwo13.