WHAT THE AGONG CAN DO: SUSPEND PARLIAMENT AND DECLARE AN EMERGENCY

No, the Rulers should just sit and watch and let the two sides of the political divide fight it out. And then, when Malaysia goes into chaos or a civil war breaks out and blood begins to flow on the streets, the Agong should suspend Parliament and declare an Emergency and get the military to step in to restore order.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

What Tunku Zain Al-Abidin said is true (SEE THE NEWS ITEM BELOW). The Rulers have to be very careful with what they do and say lest they get accused of ‘unconstitutionally interfering’ in Malaysian politics. The rakyat are very fickle. They will say one thing today and the opposite the next day.

For example, when I used to criticise PAS regarding its policies and strategies, many whacked me and said all sort of nasty things about me. They called me a turncoat and traitor and some even accused me of leaving Islam and alleged that I am now a Christian.

Then Pakatan Rakyat itself (including even some of those in PAS) turned on PAS and said even worse things about the party. At least I did not condemn PAS. I just criticised them and said that they should act more like a political party and less like a missionary movement. And I cautioned PAS that the objective of a political party is to win elections and not to try to convert non-Muslims to Islam.

So can you see how fickle the rakyat is? The rakyat, as the Malays would say, is like lalang. They sway in the wind and bend to one side and then to the other. And yet they will call people like me who have supported PAS since 1977 (long before PKR and Pakatan Rakyat were born) and who still support PAS until today as lalang.

In the 1980s, the then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad launched a campaign to denounce the Rulers. Leading the charge were Deputy Prime Minister Tun Ghafar Baba and Anwar Ibrahim.

The rakyat loved Dr Mahathir and Umno for taking on the Rulers (they still praise him for that until today). Malaysia should be turned into a Republic, they said. Why waste money maintaining the nine royal households and the office of the Agong.

Ghafar, in fact, warned the rakyat that it is not a crime to criticise the Rulers but we must not say that the Monarchy should be abolished and that Malaysia should be turned into a Republic. That is seditious and you can get arrested for that crime. But criticising the Rulers is okay.

So they whacked the Rulers. And the reason they whacked the Rulers is because Dr Mahathir wanted to push for a Bill in Parliament that no longer made it necessary for His Majesty the Agong to sign any laws. Even if the Agong does not sign those laws they will automatically become law anyway.

You may not realise that Malaysia, before the ‘Constitutional Crisis’ of the 1980s, had four branches of government. There was the Executive (the Prime Minister), the Legislature (Parliament and the Senate), the Judiciary, and the Monarchy. Dr Mahathir cut the teeth of the Legislature and the Judiciary and then he made his move on the Monarchy.

So what we have today — post-Constitutional Crisis — is an Executive who almost has absolute powers over the other three branches of government. No longer do we have four branches of government that are able to maintain checks and balances on one another.

And that was what the 1980s Constitutional Crisis did to the country. And the rakyat deserve this so shut the fook up and stop bitching. That was what you wanted. And you supported Dr Mahathir and Umno in the 1980s when he removed the veto powers of the Agong. In fact, many of you even talked about removing the Agong himself.

Today, the rakyat are saying that the Rulers should earn their pay by interfering in Malaysian politics. Yeah, right. Remember what happened in Perak? Remember what happened in Terengganu? Remember what happened in Kelantan? Remember what happened in Selangor? Remember what happened in Perlis?

In each of these cases the rakyat whacked the Rulers for what they said was ‘interference’ in politics. And now you want the Rulers to step in and ‘do something’.

No, the Rulers should just sit and watch and let the two sides of the political divide fight it out. And then, when Malaysia goes into chaos or a civil war breaks out and blood begins to flow on the streets, the Agong should suspend Parliament and declare an Emergency and get the military to step in to restore order.

That is what the Agong should do if and when Malaysia slides into chaos. After all, the Agong is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and the nine Rulers the Colonels-in-Chief of the various branches of the military.

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