The confusion about “Constitutional Monarchy” in Malaysia
Clive Kessler, New Mandala
Recent developments in Johor have once more suddenly impelled the notion of “constitutional monarchy” to the centre of Malaysian national politics.
In this encounter, both sides, all sides, invoke and affirm that idea — the idea that Malaysia is a “constitutional monarchy” — without ever really making clear what they mean by it.
What are we to make of this strange spectacle? How is this issue to be understood and resolved?
Royal politics reaffirmed
It is undeniable.
True, the “traditional Malay rulers”, as they are generally called, have long been active, and even in past times focal, in “Malay politics” in the peninsula.
Ever since Merdeka, once they assented to its advent and said so in their own encomium to its arrival — known as the Wasiat Raja-raja Melayu of early August 1957 — they have insisted on their continuing “political centrality”.
They have done so not only in deeds — by the forthright manner and emphatic style of many of their actions.
They have also done so by means of their assiduous promotion of their own “istana-centric” vision of how Malay national politics should work.
Hence the main post-Merdeka story line, to be outlined in this discussion.
The Malay state rulers had barely escaped elimination by the Malayan Union initiative of 1946 — until their position was saved as part, and as a by-product, of a more general rescue of what was popularly seen as “the Malay stake in the country” under a different Malay leadership: a new Malay leadership of non-royal notables that coalesced within and behind UMNO and successfully mobilized the rakyat in opposition to Britain’s post-war plans for what they intended as post-communal administrative reorganization, simplification and reform.
And then the Malay rulers had almost “missed the Merdeka bus” thereafter — until they “got on board” very late in the day and then, through the Wasiat Raja-raja Melayu, signalled their assent in early August 1957, barely three weeks ahead of the great event itself, to a deal that had already been largely made by and among others.
But after that near fatal and then faltering start, the Malay rulers soon began to apply themselves to the consolidation and then expansion of their position within the new Merdeka dispensation, under the new political regime.
That decision, and how its consequences have subsequently been played out, are the subject of this present commentary.
Its focus is upon the basis, the origin, and the “main line” of that story of the post-Merdeka entrenching of royal power in Malaysia as it is and works today.
It is the story of a royalist expansionism and more recently (especially since GE12 in 2008) of a new royal activism. It is the story of the development of a “new royalist” ideology and of a bid for political leadership in the post-Merdeka period.
In 1946 the Malay rulers had proved unable to save themselves. They faced institutional obliteration, or (to use the colloquial expression) they were then “as good as goners” — until they were saved by UMNO and the rakyat.
Thereafter they took umbrage and held back disapprovingly from modern politics for many years.
They looked askance at UMNO, and for a while even toyed with the idea of openly aligning themselves with Dato Onn’s Party Negara in an attempt to delay the attainment of Merdeka.
But then, whether they might like it or not, came Merdeka, and, just in time, the Malay rulers’ rather belated, even grudging, assent to it under terms that had been largely negotiated by others, mainly between Britain and the Alliance partners, especially UMNO.
“Constitutional Monarchy”?
One can say some things about what the rulers sought to do, and also to prevent, in the years leading to 1957, and what they achieved (or what others on their behalf may think, and may now claim, that they achieved) by their eleventh-hour Wasiat Raja-raja Melayu.
It can be argued both ways.
The rulers, or more precisely the “new royalist” theorists, take a certain view. Some support for some of their claims may even be derived and contrived from a study of some of the “official papers” and unofficial transcripts of the time.
For the moment, let us put aside all those debates about what the specific archival materials may suggest, about those matters of detail and their at times contested interpretation.
Let us shift our attention instead to the “big picture” historically.
Beyond what the archives may contain and suggest, serious discussion of this question has to come back to the inherent nature and character, as the culmination of the Merdeka process, of the Merdeka Constitution itself.
It was — it was explicitly framed as and still is — a constitution of and for a nation that was to be, and is, based ultimately on a modern notion of nationality. It was promulgated as the constitution of, and as the authoritative foundation for, a modern nation-state in a world of sovereign nation-states.
It is a constitution of and for a nation that is ultimately grounded in the popular sovereignty of its people, the citizens.
That is the foundation upon which the Malaysian state today rests and upon which its governments are constitutionally to be formed.
Why else would one hold popular democratic elections? And why is it — what other possible reason might there be? — that the key to state and government legitimacy lies ultimately in those popular elections and in the plausibility of the results that they yield?
Is that the kind of state that Malaysia now is?
Is that the defining jurisprudential context within which the role of the Agong and the Malay rulers is to be understood?
The answer to that question is “yes”.
You cannot really see the modern Malaysian state and its foundations — in the Reid Commission and then the post-Reid evolution of its deliberations in the Merdeka agreements and after — in any other way.
