Malaysia’s Sultans Regain Power

By admin-s Last updated Sep 19, 2014

Barisan Nasional has seen it convenient to regenerate the power of the sultans to use them as a cudgel against the opposition despite the legislation pushed through by Mahathir.

John Berthelsen, Asia Sentinel

Leadership vacuum at both state and national levels opens the door

The long-running political crisis in Malaysia’s Selangor state has shone a spotlight on what was thought to be an unlikely political phenomenon, the resurgence in power of the country’s nine sultans.

In particular, two of the sultans have refused to bend to parliamentary power. They are Sultan Sarafuddin Idris Shah of Selangor and Tunku Ismail Idris of Johor.

Tunku Ismail was batted back earlier this year in his bid to gain control of the regulation of land development in his home state. However, he remains involved in massive land reclamations that subvert Malaysian laws and pose an environmental dilemma for Singapore and he has not decreased the pressure. He is said to be a substantial shareholder in several real estate and other ventures within the massive Iskandar Malaysia Development Region, covering 2,200 sq. km and including the city of Johor Bahru and three surrounding towns. The project, started in 2006, is named for the current sultan’s late father, Almarhum Sultan Iskandar.

In Selangor, Malaysia’s richest and most populous state, Sultan Sarafuddin Idris Shah, also has extensive business interests. He is involved in many business deals with his partners Ong Beng Seng of Singapore and Syed Yusoff Syed Nasir, his old friend. They are building the Four Seasons Residences in KL City Center next to the iconic Twin Towers, Hard Rock Hotels and other projects, either together, mostly, or the Sultan on his own.

He has stepped into the middle of a controversy generated when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim attempted to replace a rebellious chief minister, Khalid Ibrahim, with his wife, Wan Azizah Ismail. However, Parti Islam se-Malaysia, one of the component parties in Anwar’s Pakatan Rakyat coalition, has staged its own rebellion, refusing to go along with Anwar’s plans, instead asking the sultan to name a PAS member to the job.

The resultant impasse has stretched on for weeks as Sarafuddin has insisted on the prerogative of picking his own choice. On Sept 8, he said he would weigh names put forward by all three opposition parties, but would not limit possible candidates to those put forward by the coalition. The prolonged political mess has nearly wrecked the opposition, resulted in what appears to be a growing split between PAS fundamentalists and moderates, and, according to one source could result in a fundamentalist PAS government in one of Malaysia’s most moderate states.

That is a far cry from the 1980s and 1990s, when former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad , in a bitter political struggle, broke the absolute power of the nine sultans, seeking to reduce them to figurehead status. They have been largely content to rule their fiefdoms, some of them running up astronomical gambling debts in London casinos that they demanded their own state exchequers to pay. But during the reign of the current prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, they have begun to reassert their sway.

“Even the Sultans were afraid of Mahathir because he took them on in 1983 and 1992/3 and curbed their extravagance and powers,” said a Kuala Lumpur-based political analyst. “After Mahathir left, the sultans were kept in check until they saw that (former Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) was a weak leader.”

In 2008, the normally quiet Sultan of Perlis objected to Badawi’s choice of chief minister and appointed his own, as did the Sultan of Terengganu. In 2009, the late Raja Azlan Shah, the sultan of Perak, stepped into the middle of a political crisis in that state after the opposition won a majority in the statehouse in the 2009 general election, only to have Najib attempt to take the state back by wooing three opposition members, reportedly with offers of cash, into the Barisan Nasional fold, causing the state government to collapse.

Azlan Shah then refused the request of Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, the opposition chief minister, to dissolve the state assembly and call for new elections. Instead, the Barisan Nasional (BN), with support from the three defecting assemblymen, now independents, formed the new state government.

“Given the lack of strong political leadership in Malaysia – where Najib’s silence and all too frequent travels overseas make it appear as if we have an absentee PM – people are carving out little fiefdoms, be it Perkasa, Mahathir, Isma, right wing NGOs, Malay Chambers of Commerce, and of course, some of the Sultans,” said a business source with close connections to the United Malays National Organization. :”Even the quiet Sultans are flexing their muscles a little bit, at the moment, demanding or putting in business proposals and getting them.”