Is Malaysia’s cabinet bloated? How we went from 17 cabinet members to 70

Recently, in Parliament, when Kapar’s MP asked whether we can improve the Cabinet (that’s the sum of all ministers and their deputies), the answer was the Cabinet’s size is already perfect *chef’s kiss*.

According to Special Functions Minister Abdul Latiff Ahmad, the number of ministers is “optimum” considering the existing challenges and responsibilities as well as expertise that was needed.

“The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) under the prime minister’s department has been given the responsibility of evaluating the Cabinet and various ministries’ performance,” – Abdul Latiff Ahmad, as quoted by FMT.

Naturally, this astute evaluation by a special functions minister sent our whole belief system spirallin’. Could we actually need 70 ministers and deputies to keep the country running as optimally as right now? We can’t tell for sure after Abdul Latiff’s statement, because none of us are familiar with the hardships and pain that comes along with being a minister in Malaysia.

But we did wonder though, have we always needed that many menteris? With that in mind, today we’ll be looking at how big past cabinets are, and we’d like to take you along for the ride. Starting with the fact that…

Back during Merdeka, we had like 17 Cabinet members

Before we start, quick note: we should have looked at the government gazettes for this one, but the website is slow as hell. So we used the next best source: Wikipedia. Anyways, the first Tunku Abdul Rahman Cabinet had the bare minimum of 14 portfolios, including the Prime Minister and his Deputy.

The actual number of ministers were 12 though, since both the Prime Minister and the Deputy also took up the portfolios of Foreign Affairs and Defence, respectively. Not every portfolio got assistant ministers, and the ones that do were Home Affairs, Education, Agriculture and Co-operatives, Health, and Works. This brought the total menteris and their deputies to a total of 17.

His second Cabinet, which started in 1959, added three new portfolios, plus introduced 3 new ministerial posts without portfolios. The portfolio of Interior and Justice was also split into two separate Ministries. By his third Cabinet, Malaysia was beginning to be formed, so besides 3 more new portfolios, portfolios for Sabah and Sarawak Affairs were also added. By 1969, the Cabinet totals 24 people – 19 ministers and 5 assistant ministers.

From this, we can see that even within one Prime Minister’s administration, the Cabinet size increased, but that may be due to the fact that back then, we’ve just started out on the road to self governance, plus at this point Sabah and Sarawak are still on the way.

After Malaysia was established though…

The growth wasn’t that drastic, but rather happened bit by bit

We didn’t have the manpower to look at all 18 cabinets that had existed since 1970, so we looked at the last cabinets of each Prime Minister since then. Here’s a quick rundown of roughly how many members there are in each of the Cabinets we’ve looked at:

• Razak’s 2nd Cabinet (1974-1976): 21 ministers, 17 deputies [total 38]
• Hussein’s 2nd Cabinet (1978-1981): 23 ministers, 23 deputies [total 46]
• Mahathir’s 6th Cabinet (1999-2003): 27 ministers, 31 deputies [total 58]
• Abdullah’s 3rd Cabinet (2008-2009): 30 ministers, 37 deputies [total 67]
• Najib’s 2nd Cabinet (2013-2018): 37 ministers, 34 deputies [total 71]
• Mahathir’s 7th Cabinet (2018-2020): 28 ministers, 26 deputies [total 54]
• Muhyiddin’s Cabinet (2020-2021): 30 ministers, 38 deputies [total 68]
• Ismail’s Cabinet (2021): 32 ministers, 38 deputies [total 70]

And here’s a quick (but may be inaccurate) rundown of all the ministerial posts seen in each of the Cabinets, plus how some of them got rebranded/evolved over the years:

From these observations, we can see outside the sudden dip when Mahathir took office a second time, the growth in size had been gradual and can’t really be attributed to one single PM. As for the changes that happened, generally the increase can be attributed to three main reasons:

1. Addition of new portfolios as the need arises, like Housing and New Villages during Razak’s time, or Federal Territories during Hussein’s time.
2. Splitting and rearranging of existing portfolios, like how Culture, Youth and Sports were later split into two: Culture, Arts and Tourism, and Youth and Sports.
3. The addition of unspecialized posts, like how in the early days we had Ministers Without Portfolios, and today we have Special Affairs Ministers and Ministers in the Prime Minister’s Department not assigned to any special tasks.

It’s also worth noting that unlike the early days of Malaya, when assistant ministers seem to only be assigned to some ministers, it is now common to give every single minister (except for the PM and his deputy) one or two deputy ministers. Anyways, the point here is that the size progression of the Cabinet may seem reasonable, but perhaps the Cabinet can still be bloated in another way.

The issue is not just the quantity, it’s the quality as well

Looking at the previous Cabinets, we have to acknowledge that Malaysia is growing in population, economy and progress in general, so it kind of makes sense that we need more people to handle the growth. However, it’s also important to note that we’ve grown politically as well: during the time of the first Cabinet, there were only 52 federal constituencies, and now we have 222. The question now is, which of the two kinds of growths caused the Cabinet to grow to its current size?

Based on recent news, it might be the second one. Just a few months ago there was a political scuffle when Zuraida Kamaruddin, the Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities, left Parti Pribumi Bersatu (PBM) to join Parti Bangsa Malaysia. An argument over who should take over her ministerial post ensued, because PBM insisted that the post belonged to the party under a quota. While this incident may not be representative of the actual situation, it suggested that at some levels, our ministers are appointed by their political affiliations rather than merit.

We’re not qualified enough to say which ministerial position and their deputies are non-essential. However, one wonders if we need so many to get to where we are now. Perhaps if Malaysia excels at every portfolio that we come up with, there wouldn’t be as much complaints about the size of the current Cabinet. But looking at the state we’re in, we wouldn’t disagree with all the people saying our Cabinet is bloated. The Cabinet size may be ‘optimum’, but the contents are another story.