Perak today, Malaysia tomorrow?
One year after 8 March
The ultimate power should only rest with the electorate or their duly elected representatives. In short, when you have doubts or deadlocks, you go to the polls.
By Wong Chin Huat, The Nut Graph
PERAK was one of the biggest surprises after 8 March 2008. After some early difficulty in appointing the menteri besar (MB), the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) state government went on to perform well beyond expectations.
The PR government has not only increased the state's revenue by RM97 million or a whopping 15%, but also introduced a couple of praiseworthy reforms.
Perak was the first state to start electing village heads since the 1960s. It was also the first state to grant permanent land titles for residents of new villages and kampung tersusun. "First" implies that the other states, whether under the PR or Barisan Nasional (BN), may have been eventually forced to emulate Perak.
One of the most politically sophisticated states in the 1950s, Perak in 2008 seemed to be a possible model for tomorrow's Malaysia.
Cut to 11 months later, and no one would want such a model anymore. Worse, Perak today may indeed be Malaysia's unfortunate tomorrow if nothing is done to reverse the present catastrophic trend.
Disintegrating parliamentary democracy?
What we are seeing in Perak now is no longer a constitutional crisis, but the beginning of the disintegration of parliamentary democracy.
Democracy is essentially about popular sovereignty, which, in the modern sense, refers to the rule by an elected government.
Although many democracies have a host of powerful institutions autonomously run by professionals and technocrats such as independent central banks, the executive and legislative powers remain in the hands of elected representatives.
The most powerful state apparatus — the bureaucracy and the security forces — must take orders from the government of the day.
This is to ensure a clear control of government by citizens. Whenever citizens decide to change the government, the new government will control the state to execute the will of the citizens.
Democracy collapses or fails when ultimate power rests with unelected institutions, such as the military, the police, the bureaucracy, the religious establishment, the media, a too-powerful judiciary, the monarchy, or even mob machinery like the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in Thailand.
