A place to breathe

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Perak's political turmoil

There are a couple of things to note in Perak's political turmoil:
  1. A state government was being taken over by BN from Pakatan Rakyat via MP crossover
  2. The Sultan of Perak blessed the took over
  3. The government was formed without a majority
  4. There are a fair many people/rakyat disagree with all the above

I considered the following as "noises" that overshadow the real issue, although it's OK to argue about them (for different reason):
  1. Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim was the one introduced this idea of crossover in this country. People blamed him for originating this issue. If you're the one who feels about that, you should blame Dato' Seri Najib in this case, not DSAI. You're right that DSAI is the one responsible in exposing the loophole, but it is our current government who really use it to take over the Perak's government.
  2. Crossover is considered as immoral in Malaysia (by me, i don't know about you) and therefore, this should be banned (I don't care what other countries system are. I'm just talking about Malaysia). I don't want to argue on how BN was rumored to be "buying" the MPs. That's up to you to dig the news.
  3. The royal family has interest in the BN to become the government. I heard this rumor, but I don't think this is part of the real issue.
Ignore these noises.

There's one significance in this turmoil that has my greatest interest:

The decision of the Sultan was questioned by the rakyat

From these events, here's my thought:

The power of the Ruler depends on the trust and respect from the people being ruled.
People has entrusted the Sultan to make the best decision in the interest of the rakyat, if the government fails to function.

The trust appear to be violated by granting BN to form a government without a majority in the State Assembly.

Since the government that has majority in this country will be of interest of the rakyat, Sultan's "titah" is not in favor of the people i.e people's interest are no longer being secured.

The act of the Sultan to interfere is a blessing, this is because our Federal government did nothing to secure the interest of Rakyat - to uphold the democracy.

However, the result is not what the people seems to be expecting.

Either the Sultan gains trust and respect from the people again by taking appropriate action (according the the interest of the people, which is the legitimate government with majority), or people would later question whether Royal Institution in this country really respect their trust.

The Malay sentiment is being played out by the media to ask the Malays not to question the Sultan no matter what. This I believe could command not small, but a lot of Malays to stick to Your Highness' decision and therefore, could help BN win a great deal of constituency if it happens that there's a statewide election.

I think we Malays forgot our own proverb:

"Raja adil Raja di sembah"
"Raja zalim Raja di sanggah".

If rakyat feels that their trust has been violated, don't you think this very proverb will guide the rakyat what to do?

Another flip side is that - does the Sultan act in the interest of the Malays? I don't have hard evidence so I won't offer any analysis here.

3 comments:

Mindy said...

If BN has nothing to fear, then they should have had a re-election as requested by the people.

And it's sad there's now a lot of friction within Pakatan lately.

Also there's a lot of ridiculous "I'm going to sue you" statements from our politicians. Makes me wonder why they have so much free time for things which bring no good.

Following Malaysian politics is frustrating.

Anonymous said...

just need your attention of this, how about the term using for MP is crosover is considerably wrong, because they are moved out from the party.

As i understood, crosover is ones go to another party but the 3 MPs declared moved and set themselves free.

Unknown said...

Anonymous

I don't really understand what you're trying to say, but if I understand one bit, you're in support of banning crossover in this country's democracy.

I'm against crossovers. It should be made illegal, at least within the 5 years period.

If they really want to jump party, they should be stripped off their title as MP or ADUN.

I'm in favor of reducing the frequency of by-elections, so this follows that if an MP or ADUN crossover, it is an illegal act and the action will nullify their positions as rep for rakyat due to breach of trust.

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