How Khalid keeps people’s power alive

By admin-s Last updated Aug 16, 2014

It seem mad to say this, but Khalid Ibrahim, in what he has been doing, is a reformer: he has kept alive the will and voice of the people, and kept alive the spirit and practice of constitutional representative democracy, the same spirit and practice so seriously wounded in Perak 2009.

uppercaise

What happened in Perak

* the Barisan Nasional engineered defections from the ruling PAS-led coalition state government;

* Perak BN chairman Najib Razak went to the Sultan of Perak with letters to show they had defected;

* He argued that their defections gave the Barisan a majority in the state assembly;

* The Sultan agreed, and proclaimed that Nizar Jamaludin was no longer menteri besar;

* It caused a public uproar;

* Pakatan Rakyat went to court;

* The High Court said the sultan could not sack the menteri besar. Then the Appeal Court overturned the verdict. Finally the Federal Court said a vote is not necessary and that a majority support can be shown by outside means.

By calmly following the constitution and his powers under the constitution, Khalid is rejecting the extra-constitutional dirty dealings that saw the fall of the PAS-led coalition government in Perak in 2009 through defections and a direct appeal to the Sultan.

The late Sultan Azlan Shah removed his menteri besar because somebody came from KL and showed him letters to say several assembly members had switched sides. The Federal Court, wrongly, later upheld the sultan’s decision; it also said a vote in the state assembly was not necessary and that support for a head of government could be shown by other means.

Those decisions go against our democracy, which is based on the people electing representatives. The sultan and the court allowed outsiders, people not part of the process, to side-step the elected state assembly, where the people are represented, and thus side-step the voice and will of the people.

The supreme law, the constitution, gives the people’s representatives the power to remove the head of government. Going directly to the sultan is going outside the constitution: he is the last resort, taken only in extreme or extraordinary circumstances when the voice of the people cannot be heard, there is deadlock in administration, or there is public disorder.

No such conditions existed in Perak then, no such extreme conditions exist in Selangor today.

The next constitutional step is asking the people’s representatives to decide. This was not taken. Instead a party leader took a short-cut straight to the sultan. Now in Selangor, PKR are also trying the short-cut even before the people’s voice is heard in the assembly.