Umno-led BN using Johor Bill to hide behind the palace
This may be the BN’s gambit to seemingly accede to remove the royal provisions but by sleight of hand ramrod through the other provisions that may be open to abuse.
Hazlan Zakaria, The Ant Daily
While they appear to be among the most vocal with Umno mouthpiece Utusan Malaysia leading the charge against royal involvement in the Johor state administration, Umno leaders have only themselves to blame for setting the scene which probably led to the imbroglio concerning the state’s Housing Board Bill.
The latest controversy on alleged royal interference has come at a time when Umno leaders and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) aligned to the party continue to raise the bogeymen they say are a threat to Malay supremacy, Islam and the royals.
Time and again they have asked for laws to protect the royalty and called on the Malays to rise up to protect the Malays, Islam and the Malay Rulers.
And by extension, defend Umno which claims to represent all three.
It seems like a desperate act as it teeters on the brink of being voted out after over 50 years of rule over Malaysia, yet loathe to give up the trappings of power for the addiction has set in.
Setting the stage, so to speak, for a situation where the royalty is seen once again to be the paramount force of rule and no longer symbolic.
Indeed the Johor royal house has been known to be rather energetic when it comes to exercising self-determination, in acquiring fancy number plates, involvement in real estate developments and some say pulling what strings it can when it comes to state governance.
The pro-royalty atmosphere that Umno had been keen on developing perhaps plays into this.
Thus, it is ironic that Umno leaders are scrambling left right and centre to head off the passing of the Johor state Bill which may see executive powers over a proposed state housing board executed by the Johor Sultan.
But while they expressed worries that this may breach constitutional monarchy, sully the Sultan’s image, lead to public unease with the ruler or unnecessarily burden the monarch with administrative matters, their real fear is perhaps losing their grip on power to an unlikely quarter.
For instead of the bogeys of communists, liberals, proselytising Christians, LGBTs or Pakatan Rakyat, they now face being “dethroned”, so to speak, by Malay rulers whom they have long since thought consigned to acting on the advice of the PM or Menteri Besar, since the Age of Mahathir.
But it seems now one Sultan, at least, has other plans that even former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad worries will see the Johor Umno warlords cowed.
But indeed Johor is a rather unique place for it is one of the strongholds of the Malay party and is the bastion of Malay agenda and the call for the preservation of Malay royalty.
But it is also the battleground between Umno and the royals over who is more sovereign, the civil government or the constitutional monarch in which the power of rule is invested in, if symbolic constitutionally.
The state will probably be the battleground in this tussle, though perhaps this time Umno may not be so armed to face the conflict.
While some Umno leaders may seem to be against the Johor Housing and Real Property Board Bill 2014 which appears to empower the Sultan to be involved in executive rule, it may be just pulling wool over the rakyat’s eyes and another BN ploy to hide its excesses.
