COMMENT | The Agong has to act
COMMENT | What’s all that drama going on with our politicians descending on the Istana in the last few days? What do they want? They all want the king to tell the PM to reconvene Parliament as soon as possible. After all, Hamzah Zainudin has already said Bersatu is not afraid of Parliament.
But let’s start with Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He still wants to be the boss. He pleaded with the king to establish the National Operations Council (NOC) in the manner it was set up to deal with the 1969 racial riots. Mahathir is always very frank about what he wants. His supporters are excited with the idea; they think in this way Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin will be out, and so will his ministers. They expect Parliament to be recalled with a regular sitting. They believe by having a one-man rule, effective Covid-19 measures will be put in place, and we will all live happily ever after.
To make the NOC idea more appealing, Mahathir’s supporters tempted us by saying NOC will allow Parliament to be opened for regular sittings like in the earlier 1969 NOC. This is false. Parliament was reopened in 1971, 21 months after the NOC was established in 1969. There is nothing to suggest that under the new NOC, Parliament will be convened at all.
If we condemn the “Sheraton Move” where the government was set up by enticing MPs to defect from Umno, PKR, etc and regularly attract other political frogs to their side, how can we support a more brutal and shameful assault on democracy, which is a rule by one man and a committee? I hope the Istana will just dismiss the proposal and not waste precious time on it.
It is not our democracy that is hampering the effort to deal with the pandemic. What is hampering our efforts is having a government that probably has no majority. When a government has no majority, the prime minister is not a proper PM, but a pseudo one. The Constitution says the prime minister who governs must be one that has majority support in Parliament. It does not matter if he has popular ratings in all the surveys published by “friendly newspapers”. The question is - does he have support in Parliament?
When a country has a pseudo prime minister, he will be busy trying to maintain his government’s survival. He will not be focused on the pandemic. He will have to make do with incompetent ministers or officials in managing the crises because he can’t afford to remove them. This is not the way to manage a national crisis. A pseudo PM is by definition a weak leader. His weakness attracts the attention of other political scavengers (which may include the PM’s closest lieutenants) who will move in to take his place at any time, ensuring continued instability in the government. This is not the way to...
