Civil servants will no longer be appointed as local councillors or heads of local municipalities in Penang under a new directive from the Pakatan Rakyat state government.

Instead, politicians will be appointed in their place.

The move will take effect by end of this month when the state government makes a fresh annual appointment of councillors for Penang island under the Pulau Pinang Municpal Council (MPPP) and for the mainland under the Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP).

The new step to replace civil servants with politicians is said to be towards restoring the ‘third vote’ or local government elections.

Both councils, with 24 councillors each, are currently headed by civil servants.

MPPP, meanwhile, has two councillors as heads of the northeast and southwest districts while MPSP has three councillors as heads of the Seberang Perai Utara, Tengah and Selatan districts.

The new policy effectively means that the current presidents of the councils and the five district officers would be replaced by politicians from the ruling Pakatan Rakyat coalition, thus making Penang the first state to drop civil servants as councillors.

Political appointees increase

At a press conference today, co-chairperson the state-level liaison committee, also known as the Penang Pakatan Rakyat Council (PPRC), Chow Kon Yeow revealed that the failure of district officers to attend municipal council meetings regularly, thus disrupting operations and the decision-making process considerably, were the main reasons behind the latest decision.

He added that since municipalities were local governments accountable to the public, politicians were the ideal choices to helm them.

Apart from seven NGO appointees – four on the island and three on the mainland - the new Pakatan policy will see the numbers of political appointees in the two local councils increasing from current 36 to 43 with 21 in MPPP and 22 in MPSP.

Gerakan state chief Dr Teng Hock Nan and, Penaga assemblyperson and state Umno secretary Azhar Ibrahim were last politicians to become presidents of MPPP and MPSP respectively.

Civil servants began to head both councils since 2000.

Sources said PKR planned to have one man, Balik Pulau division head Mansor Othman as the head of MPSP under a power-sharing concept that would see DAP helming the MPPP.

Paya Terubong assemblyperson Yeoh Soon Hin, who is currently also an MPPP councillor, is touted to become the new MPPP president.

Opposition party Gerakan, in its recent report card on the performance of Pakatan Rakyat councillors, rated Yeoh as ‘the worst councillor’ for allegedly not being easily accessible to the public and for failure to carry out his duties effectively.

Liaison committee set up

Chow hit back today saying the Gerakan report card was a deliberate move to belittle the performance of Pakatan councillors.

"The report was biased, unfair and politically-motivated," he said.

During the meeting today, the coalition leaders also decided to replace five of the current seven councillors appointed last April from among the non-government organisations (NGOs) with new five NGO representatives.

The NGO councillors are to be replaced mainly due to poor performance.

Meanwhile, Penang has become the first state to formalise the coalition’s state-level liaison committee – PPRC – which will have three co-chairpersons comprising representatives from DAP, PKR and PAS.

Each party will have seven representatives on the PPRC and a secretariat will soon be operational for the public’s convenience.

Apart from Chow, PKR state chief Zahrain Mohd Hashim and PAS state commissioner Mohd Salleh Man are the other two PPRC co-chairpersons.