Defenders and apologists for the alleged abuse of power by Fire and Rescue Department director-general Jaafar Sidek Tambi may want to learn a thing or two from the standards set by the late Bank Negara governor, Ismail Ali.

An exemplary civil servant who left behind a legacy of impeccable public service standards, he once explained to me, then a fresh law graduate, that a conflict of interest situation is not just when there is an apparent conflict. It includes any remote possibility of an occurrence of a potential conflict.

So I do wonder if any of the fire department officers who 'volunteered' to help out at the wedding, had any real choice about participating.

Ismail's favourite response to my often straight-laced legal advice was that the things we do in the course of our public duty must not only be legal, they have to be 'legal and proper'.

Now I do wonder if it was proper to drag a generator belonging to the department to be on stand-by at the stadium for the wedding.

Later on when I rose to become one of the chief executives of the subsidiaries Ismail controlled, his reminder about corruption and abuse of power was cutting in its simplicity; "everything starts small, even corruption"

So now I know better than to excuse certain small indulgences as 'no big deal'. Firemen, especially, would understand that small fires lead to bigger ones.

Admittedly, Ismail's legendary scolding of his officers who came to his mother's funeral during office hours was a bit hard to swallow. But he would certainly roll in his grave if he was ever accused of encouraging his officers to spend their office hours planning his son's wedding.

What has become of our standards of propriety and sense of public duty? If indeed Ismail was from a bygone generation of Malaysians far removed from the 'Malaysia boleh' generation, how about adhering to Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's stand on corruption at 'zero-tolerance'. Or is that just another slogan?