The Sultan Syndrome

  

The Sultan Syndrome

 

M. Bakri Musa

Feb 2, 2026

Updated excerpt from my Qur’an, Hadith, and Quran In Critical Thinking.

 

In days of yore if an erratic villager were to run amok, he would inflict damage upon only a buffalo or two at most, and perhaps a dilapidated kampung shack; likewise with a misbehaving sultan then. Today however, a sultan’s minor mischief would impact the whole nation, setting a new low of acceptable behavior. That in turn would be imitated by their underlings, from the Prime Minister and his cabinet members to the lowly foremen. They too would expect to be treated as mini-sultans of their respective domains, a phenomenon I referred to in my earlier book The Malay Dilemma Revisited: Race Dynamics In Modern Malaysia as the “Sultan Syndrome.” Today’s civil service “Little Napoleons” are but a variant.

 

         Therein lies the problem. If directors and departmental heads were to behave imperiously like sultans instead of being engaged executives, then nothing would get done. They would be consumed with the trappings of their offices while valuing loyalty above competence from their subordinates. They in turn would not dare question their superiors.

 

         Consider Najib Razak, Prime Minister from 2009 to 2018. It did not take long for him and his wife to adopt and enjoy their perks and delusions as if they were members of the royalty. His wife, Rosmah Mansor, fancied herself as First Lady, relishing the accompanying ostentatious lifestyle. She could on a whim spend millions of public funds for her own gratification. 

 

         This sultan syndrome is also being manifested in many other sinister and none-too-subtle ways. Picture the scene at meetings where the King or Sultan would be in attendance, not as a ceremonial figure but as someone with executive responsibilities, as being university chancellors or heads of religious bodies.

 

         The introduction alone would consume a good part of the meeting with everyone genuflecting (sembah - bowing down and kissing the hand of the sultans). Each speaker would outdo each other in addressing the sultan in ever-glowing terms. It would be hard to imagine anything substantive being accomplished during such meetings. Of greater import, would anyone dare disagree or pose any probing questions to or of him?

 

         Witness the many elaborate public ceremonies involving Prime Minister Anwar just this past week. What he preached will go through one ear to another. Those drawn out sessions are but excuses for civil servants to be away from their desks and work.  

 

         Feudalism is alive and flourishing in Malaysia. With the feudal structure comes strict, rigid hierarchical status with subordinates remaining obsequious to their superiors. Were a junior to question or even seek clarification from his superior, it would only invite some demeriting remarks, or worse. A junior must not only refrain from asking questions but go beyond as, to put it in the colloquial, bodek (sucking-up) in and out of official functions. 

 

         Problems get worse when your superior is not just in the official scheme of things but also beyond. Early in my parent’s careers as teachers in the 1950s, their ultimate superior was a member of the royalty, long stretched out. He was also several bureaucratic hoops above my father’s lowly teaching position. As such this member of the royalty should have had minimal impact on my parents’ careers, except for one salient fact. He lived in the same kampong with us.

 

         My parents’ fault was that they did not bring tributes to his house, as expected in Malay feudal culture. My father was brought up in Rantau, an area inundated with immigrants working on the surrounding colonial tin mines and rubber estates. Bringing tributes to local chieftains was alien to them, and that rubbed off on my father.

 

         For that minor unintended slight, my parents were transferred from one remote “black” area to another during the height of the communist insurgency.

 

         No surprise that subordinates do not give advice other than what their superiors wanted to hear. Seventy years later Malaysia has not changed.

 

Next: The Bane of Hofstede’s “Power Distance”