Little lords and dress codes

Little lords and dress codes

Andrew Sia


COMMENT | Three dress code furores in just one week of December. As usual, it involves our civil “servants” behaving more like little lords over the public

Why the obsession with covering up one’s knees before being able to enter a police station, a hospital, or a district office? The first two happened in Penang while the third was at Kuala Selangor.

Mind you, in all three cases it's no longer just female knees that excite our “moral guardians”, even men’s knees are now considered too “glaring” or “menjolok mata”.

Yes, they claim to guard our “morals”. Or as the Kuala Selangor Municipal Council (MPKS) president put it, this was “in line with the Rukun Negara on good behaviour and morality”.

Well, at least at MPKS, they provided a sarong for people to wear rather them forcing them to go home to change.


Packaging over substance

But why do our public servants seem so fixated on appearance over performance, about packaging over substance?

Goodness knows there are many complaints about government staff who are slow, inept, or even corrupt. Surely, they would be better off focusing on improving services rather than fussing over whether a man’s shorts are above or below the knees?

It seems ironic that the more some people puff themselves up with nice clothes and flashy offices, the more standards have fallen.

For example, police officers, or mata-mata as they were then called, were more hardworking at patrolling streets to curb crime in the 1950s - when they wore shorts!

School education was better in the 1970s when male students also wore shorts. But when the authorities decided to “dress up” kids in long pants, standards began dropping.

I was told by two senior teachers that the passing mark for Physics in SPM nowadays is around 15. But our education ministers keep boasting that passing rates look ever better.

So it seems that performance is inversely proportional to appearances or external “glamour”. Or in simple language - the longer the pants, the shorter the quality.


Antarctic aircon

I went to secondary school in Seremban in the early 1980s. Boys in Forms 1 to 3 wore shorts while those in Forms 4 to 6 had to wear long pants.

I used to walk and later cycle to school. I remember how comfortable shorts were and how hot it was to switch to long pants, especially under the midday sun. And, of course, shorts didn’t get all muddy when it rained.

The problem with our civil servants is that they pretend that everybody works in Antarctic air-conditioning like them - which wastes electricity and is not eco-friendly. But it’s a “classy” environment where they can put on their posh jackets and make believe they are in an “advanced” Western country with a cold climate.

Yet, they forget that people like hawkers, labourers and farmers have to work in our hot and humid tropical climate. But when they need to go to hospitals or the police station, our Little Napoleons insist they must first go home to change into long pants. To show “respect” for government offices.

This is pure class discrimination. Looking down on “scruffy” people in shorts. Insisting they must kowtow to the little lords of the civil service by dressing up “properly”. Are these Madani values?

It reminds me of discos in the 1980s which used to insist that male patrons must wear leather shoes (no sneakers), shirts (no T-shirts) and pants (no jeans).

Nightclubs today have long abandoned such stiff-necked rules. Instead, it’s some “jaga pintu” guys who now behave like disco bouncers of yesteryears, stopping those with “low-class” shorts from entering what are supposed to be public “facilities”.

What? Do government offices now aspire to be five-star hotels? But even Shangri-la or The Hilton won't stop guests from entering with shorts!


Mr Madani values?

We expected better from a Selangor district council, which is under a Pakatan Harapan state government. And from Penang police stations and hospitals which are now under a Putrajaya led by saudara Anwar Ibrahim.

Ironically, it was an Umno minister, Azalina Othman Said, who told Parliament back in 2015 that: “Members of the public can wear clothes appropriate to Eastern culture and values when dealing with government offices.”

“However, the government will still serve those members of the public who are not appropriately dressed,” she said.

Exactly what is “Eastern culture and values”? Chinese women wear short dresses for Lunar New Year events. Bollywood costumes are getting more sexy.

Many Malaysian men of all races nowadays also wear shorts to go to the mamak/kopitiam and shopping malls. And don't forget the influence of K-pop.

Hello, all that is the “Eastern culture” practised in Malaysia. The standard should be based on what's acceptable at the True Temple of our culture - the shopping mall.

Some will ridiculously claim that without dress codes, people will go to the district council in a bikini. Hello, nobody does that in a Malaysian mall laa.

Perhaps the problem begins when some feel that “Eastern culture” equals “Muslim culture”? Or worse, the neo-feudal culture of self-important yet insecure officials?

But that is not what the law says. DAP’s Beruas MP Ngeh Koo Ham, a lawyer, pointed out in May 2022 that there is no law giving government officers the power to insist on dress codes for the public before serving them.

Malaysia Madani is supposedly about creating a country that believes in humanity and good values such as fair, just, and effective governance.

Was Anwar so concerned about whether the impoverished rubber tappers, whom he championed as a student activist in 1974, wore long pants to the district council?

The key words here are “fair and just” government, not the domination of one community’s values over others. Or an undemocratic sense of “class”. And certainly, not petty Little Napoleons imposing dress codes which, according to both Azalina and Ngeh, are wrong.

This is what many voters wanted when they voted for Anwar’s Harapan. Not for little lords to make up finicky rules, demanding people, including humble hawkers and farmers, to dress up to “respect” their inflated sense of five-star grandeur.

So, enough of this nonsense. It’s time for our civil servants to be just that - servants of the people who pay their salaries.



ANDREW SIA is a veteran journalist who likes teh tarik khau kurang manis. You are welcome to give him ideas to brew at tehtarik@gmail.com