The Westminster system and natural justice! I

I have not made any posting since Thursday last because I’ve been following the UK general elections on CNN, BBC and the internet. My interest in this is because UK practices the Westminster system of a democratic parliamentary system of government, the same system Malaysia’s democracy is based on.

By Romerz

Both countries have a titular sovereign or head of state. In UK it is Her Majesty The Queen and in Malaysia it is DYMM Yang di-Pertuan Agung. We both have a House of Commons (Dewan Rakyat in our case) and we both have an upper house, the House of Lords in UK and the Senate in Malaysia.

Of these three institutions, only membership to the House of Commons or the Dewan Rakyat is determined by the ordinary citizens of both countries via elections, whether general or by.

The important thing to note here is that the executive power to administer a country like ours and UK is derived from members of parliament (who have the majority to form a responsible government) to do so. And the system is structured in such a way that those who can form the executive branch of government are mostly sourced from members of parliament elected by the UK ‘common’ man/women or the Malaysian rakyat.

Meaning that in both countries, the power to decide the direction the nation should take, lie in the hands of their respective ordinary citizens!

And this system can only work if those who derive power from such a system understands how it can best work and their responsibilities to keep the system ‘pure’ so that each branch of a Westminster style derived government can continue to uphold the system without wrecking it.

This brings me to the differences despite our common system.

The voters of UK returned a hung parliament last Thursday meaning no one single political party gained enough seats in parliament to form an absolute majority. Something not seen in 34 years in UK and definitely something which the majority of those elected to parliament today have not seen as an adult politician. A ‘problem’ of sorts thrown at them by ordinary voters!

So how do they resolve this present impasse?

They do so by talking to each other and horse-trading with each other to see if a compromise could be reached (still ongoing as I write this post), to form a coalition government, a minority government or a national government. Not once do they involve the sovereign HM The Queen in all these talks, who is constitutionally prohibited to be put in a position that jeopardizes her neutrality as constitutional monarch of a divided nation – much like ours.

Not so in Malaysia when our DYMM and the titular heads of state can be manipulated or coerced by those from UMNO who derived power from us ordinary Malaysians (Perak, Perlis and Terengganu cases as examples).

Read more at: http://romerz.blogspot.com/2010/05/westminster-system-and-natural-justice.html