A Pakatan shadow on Najib’s Cabinet
What is truly a game-changer is the formation of a shadow front bench. Yesterday, Pakatan announced that it had assigned MPs from each of its component parties to shadow all of the 25 ministries in the Cabinet. For once, someone in the opposition will be responsible for delving into the particulars of policymaking.
By John Lee, The Malaysian Insider
Today, three things are in the headlines: Pakatan Rakyat’s formation of a shadow front bench, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s appeal being denied by the courts, and the Kedah DAP quitting the PAS-led Kedah government. I have listed these events in exactly the order of importance I think they will have in the long run. The notion of a competent and capable opposition is new to Malaysians, as is the idea of the opposition having clear, concrete policies to put forth, and an institutionalised shadow front bench will fundamentally alter how the political debate is waged.
Let’s start with the scandal in Kedah. This might seem like big news, but in reality, the DAP has a negligible presence in Kedah; it has only one representative in the state assembly, and with a small non-Malay population, there is little room for the party to grow (at least for now). The decision to quit the state government was thus taken by only a few DAP leaders, and already the party at the national level is moving to tamp down suggestions of Pakatan’s dissolution.
So far I see no reason to think that this will be the undoing of Pakatan — it is a setback, but a perfectly manageable one. In the long run, we do not remember skirmishes such as this. It is the battles, like the one fought on March 8, which people remember and which fundamentally change our country’s history.
The rejection of Anwar’s appeal to have his case heard by the Sessions Court instead of the High Court is a similar minor blip on the radar. The judgment handed down by the Court of Appeal is not fundamentally unfair, and from what I can tell, seems reasonable: it holds that the Prime Minister, because of the separation of powers, cannot interfere in prosecutions. For this reason the Prime Minister’s promise that the Attorney-General would not be involved in the prosecution was not binding. That sounds fair to me.
And frankly speaking, the judiciary is so tainted and suspect that no matter which court heard the case, its ruling would be in question before the ink even dried on the judge’s signature. The Court of Appeal ruling here does not substantially change the game in any way.
What is truly a game-changer is the formation of a shadow front bench. Yesterday, Pakatan announced that it had assigned MPs from each of its component parties to shadow all of the 25 ministries in the Cabinet. For once, someone in the opposition will be responsible for delving into the particulars of policymaking.
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