The emergency Selangor state assembly sitting may, in fact, seek to empower the menteri besar as well as the sultan of the state.

Despite the earlier calls by MB Khalid Ibrahim to reinstate the royal powers to the Sultan of Selangor following the imbroglio over the appointment of the state secretary, the bill to be tabled at the sitting will have to explore the option of empowering both.

The move to amend the state constitution will need a two-thirds majority of the state assembly, which the ruling Pakatan Rakyat coalition does not have.

Pakatan, which holds 35 of the 56 Selangor assembly seats, is three seats shy of commanding that majority.

With that, Malaysiakini understands that the bill may not even have anything to do with the state constitution and that amendments to the other existing state laws may be tabled instead.

“We are still looking at several options and nothing is final yet,” said a Pakatan lawmaker who had attended the meeting on the matter in Shah Alam earlier.

It was also understood that, among other options, the Pakatan assemblypersons will also move to pass the bill to clearly define the services commission that is empowered to appoint a state secretary.

Previously, the 1993 constitutional amendment saw the repeal of Article 52(6) from the Selangor state constitution, which states that in the event of there being no service commission having jurisdiction in respect of any appointment of any officers mentioned in Clause (1), such appointment may be made by His Highness acting at his discretion.

As such, the power to appoint top government officers in the state have been centralised to the federal government under the current Public Services Commission.

Legal experts to study the amendments

Apart from that, the state government may also appoint a special panel of legal experts consisting of constitutional professors such as Param Cumaraswamy and Abdul Aziz Bari.

The panel will then present to the MB an array of options to be tabled at the state assembly sitting scheduled to be held at the end of this month.

In the meantime, it was also understood that the several of the BN assemblypersons have verbally informed speaker Teng Chang Khim that they would not be attending the sitting.

Selangor Umno deputy chief Noh Omar had also today indicated that BN would be staying away from the sitting, calling the suggested amendment “rash” and “emotional”.

Teng had previously said that any proposed bill passed could be retrospective.