Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's new post-election cabinet was an event eagerly awaited for by all to see if his actions would match his words.

Abdullah has ridden the popularity bandwagon by promising a corrupt-free, transparent and clean administration.

Many rightly assumed that he would be able to do this only after obtaining a fresh mandate from the rakyat giving the impression that only such a mandate would possibly save him from any intra-party struggle, if it arises.

He got this mandate in abundance when the rakyat overwhelmingly succumbed to the 'Abdullah factor' and brought about a massive success for the Barisan Nasional coalition that he leads.

So, with the mandate now, the time has come for Abdullah to start carrying out his remedial works that can make his administration different and perhaps better than the previous one.

Reminder of the old order

In order to have a clean administration, Abdullah must cut the umbilical cord that is still attached to the government he inherited from Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

He had his opportunity today and he failed by not dropping any of the "tainted" ministers and there were quite a number.

His biggest task today has been in dropping an MCA minister who has been sidelined by his party and a couple more whose time was up anyway.

Apart from that he had replaced the five old ministers who had decided on their own not to continue their political careers. As for the rest, he had continued to plough on with the same old faces.

No doubt he had infused new faces, but these rookies merely replaced some of the other also-rans in the cabinet.

The rakyat would have applauded his move if he had brought in new faces to replace these veterans, rather than expanding the cabinet. With the new faces, he could have asked the rakyat for a chance for his new team to govern efficiently and without any negative public perception attached.

His oft-heard "work with me and not for me" would have sounded sweeter yet if he had dropped these senior ministers who are seen as a reminder of the old regime.

With this letdown, coupled with his failure to drop some veteran candidates in the polls, Abdullah is only accentuating the belief that he is weak and totally unable to break clean from the grip of the old order.

No matter what his spin-doctors say after today, these failures by him will leave an indelible scar in his young career as the premier.

Tighter leash

However all may not be lost for Abdullah. He may still salvage his reputation by having a tighter leash on his ministers, including the old and tainted ones.

He must be able to dictate terms to them, and not the other way around, especially with the new ones in his cabinet now. He will definitely not want them to be influenced by the manner of work advocated by the senior ministers.

Abdullah must also be open to criticisms from the civil society and the public at large whenever his ministers go astray. On top of that his ministers themselves must be open to constructive criticisms from all and be open to bright ideas.

For this, Abdullah must introduce a new working culture that will allow interaction between his cabinet and the rakyat.

The rakyat must know how and why certain decisions are made. They must also be able to question ministers on their ministerial conduct.

Of course, with a not-so-strong opposition in parliament, this job will now have to be left directly to the rakyat.

In order for this to happen, Abdullah must encourage the rakyat to speak without fear in highlighting any cases of ministerial abuse or corruption.

He will surely win many brownie points if he introduces the whistleblowers law, relaxing some of the harsher laws and ensuring a truly independent judiciary and freer prosecution and corruption agencies.

Open pledge

Abdullah has also made the right move by introducing and encouraging e-mail communications by the rakyat with him. Now he must extend this to all his ministers.

All ministers must have a constantly updated website where they can put in information of their policy implementations. Their e-mails too must be a functioning one, with the ministers themselves responding to queries from the grassroots.

The rakyat's perception on the old faces can be swayed if these ministers can show that they too can come clean to work under Abdullah's government.

For this, they and more importantly, all the other ministers, must give a pledge to the rakyat that they will be accountable, transparent and responsible in their ministerial duties.

Abdullah should get all his ministers to sign this pledge openly. He should also get them to publicly declare their assets so that the rakyat would know the "value" of each minister.

Only with these new implementations, and perhaps a few others, in place, can Abdullah even try to win over the rakyat again with this cabinet.

Until then, it is just a case of old wine in new bottle Pak Lah's flavour

K KABILAN is a member of malaysiakini.