The for­mer chair of the State En­ter­pris­es Re­view Com­mit­tee (SERC) is call­ing for the de­politi­ci­sa­tion of state board ap­point­ments.

The call from Dr Ter­rence Far­rell comes af­ter a court rul­ing that crit­i­cised the ten­den­cy of State boards to act as mere “rub­ber stamps” for min­is­te­r­i­al di­rec­tives.

On Wednes­day, High Court Judge Ricky Rahim stressed that State board mem­bers are not ap­point­ed to sim­ply en­dorse gov­ern­ment poli­cies. In­stead, he said they are legal­ly ob­lig­at­ed to ex­er­cise in­de­pen­dent judge­ment, over­sight, and due dili­gence in line with sound cor­po­rate gov­er­nance stan­dards

Far­rell, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, said the plan to fix the sys­tem has al­ready been writ­ten but has been ig­nored.

Far­rell chaired the SERC, which sub­mit­ted a re­port com­mis­sioned by the then cab­i­net and de­liv­ered in 2016. He said it of­fered a de­tailed roadmap for over­haul­ing state board gov­er­nance.

The SERC re­port ex­am­ined the struc­ture, pur­pose, and ac­count­abil­i­ty of whol­ly owned state en­ter­pris­es. It flagged ram­pant in­ef­fi­cien­cies, politi­cised board ap­point­ments, and a lack of con­ti­nu­ity in pol­i­cy ex­e­cu­tion is­sues that con­tin­ue to plague the sys­tem near­ly a decade lat­er.

When asked whether the re­port was ever im­ple­ment­ed, Far­rell didn’t mince words:

“The re­port, like most oth­ers, dis­ap­peared,” he said.

Among the rec­om­men­da­tions were a leg­isla­tive frame­work mod­elled on New Zealand’s State-Owned En­ter­pris­es Act, se­lec­tion of di­rec­tors based on in­dus­try ex­per­tise, stag­gered board terms to pre­vent whole­sale re­place­ment with every change in gov­ern­ment and clear per­for­mance man­dates and re­al-time mon­i­tor­ing by the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Mean­while, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah pro­posed sweep­ing changes to end what he called po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age from state board ap­point­ments.

He rec­om­mend­ed that re­spect­ed civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, trade unions, women and youth groups, and busi­ness cham­bers, all nom­i­nate 100 qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als each.

He said the gov­ern­ment would then se­lect board mem­bers based on com­pe­tence and rel­e­vance, not po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty.

“This ap­proach re­moves race, re­li­gion, par­ty and fam­i­ly con­nec­tions from the process,” Ab­du­lah said yes­ter­day. “Peo­ple would be serv­ing the na­tion, not a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.”

He al­so pro­posed stag­gered board terms, sim­i­lar to what ex­ists in pri­vate sec­tor list­ed com­pa­nies, to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity of ex­per­tise and pol­i­cy ex­e­cu­tion be­yond elec­toral cy­cles.

“You can­not build sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment if every five years, a new board comes in and throws out the last plan. That’s ex­act­ly what con­tributed to the down­fall of Petrotrin,” he warned.

Ab­du­lah dis­missed con­cerns that such civ­il-so­ci­ety-nom­i­nat­ed boards might re­sist gov­ern­ment agen­das, point­ing out that board mem­bers are ac­count­able to the suc­cess of the en­ter­prise, not to any par­ty.

He rec­om­mend­ed that line min­istries, through per­ma­nent sec­re­taries or se­nior of­fi­cials, serve as the for­mal link be­tween boards and gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.