Constitution: The King and the Pauper
A Kadir Jasin
THE New Straits Times reported in its online edition today that the de facto leader of the PKR, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, had been seeking audiences with the Malay rulers to assure them that the new government respects the royal institution.
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| Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim having an audience with the Sultan of Johor |
Since the annihilation of its master, the United Malay National Organisation (Umno), the NST has been diligently reporting government news albeit with its own sinister twist.
It reported that Anwar had wanted to assure the rulers that Pakatan Harapan (PH) is not being controlled by the Chinese-majority DAP as claimed by Umno and Barisan Nasional in the run-up to last month’s general election.
Two very loaded and naughty statements – “Anwar assuring the rulers” and “PH not being controlled by the Chinese-majority DAP”.
It reported Anwar saying: “I told them not to worry because the government was not under DAP, and there were no attempts to eliminate the power of the rulers.”
What was even more sinister was the fact that the NST sourced this report from the newly re-launched The Malaysian Insight (TMI) news portal.
According to the NST report (quoting the TMI), Anwar said so in a speech to members of the Malaysian Muslim Youth Association (Abim) at their headquarters in Kajang on Saturday night.
Another proof of the NST’s sinister motive – reporting news that happened almost two days earlier and quoting a news portal.
But it is also possible that the NST has become so unprofessional and inefficient that it is two days late in reporting news or had missed the event altogether.
The NST
I stopped reading the NST several years ago so I don’t know much about the promptness and quality of its reporting. Only after the inauguration of the new PH government that its reporters were supposedly told that they are free to report what they see fit.
The PH victory has done some good to the NST journalism.
But I don’t give much credence to the freeing of its editorial stance because at the helm are the same editors who turned the paper into the Völkischer Beobachter of Umno.
The Völkischer Beobachter (The Racial Observer) was the mouthpiece of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or the Nazi Party.
The NST quoted TMI quoting Anwar saying: “The constitutional monarch will not lose power. I explained all this to them. My intention when I met them was clear, that is, to help explain the PH government’s policies to the rulers.”
According to report quoted by the NST, Anwar’s royal audiences – with the Agong, the Agong’s mama and several Sultans – had prompted rumours that he was undermining the Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, by forging a pact with the rulers.
The Rulers, according to the report-upon-report, have a testy relationship with the PM.
If the report is worth anything, my take on it is this: While Dr Mahathir runs the country as the Prime Minister, Anwar appears to be acting or behaving like a political commissar.
In the communist system, a political commissar is many times more powerful than a battalion of soldiers.
