A non-Malay PM: How possible?

By Deborah Loh | 08 June 2010 | Read [137] Comments |  Print This Post

IN envisioning federal power, one of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR)’s trickiest points is where to place the DAP (read, a Chinese Malaysian) in the executive line up. As prime minister? God forbid, not in this Malay-Muslim majority country. As deputy prime minister? But what about PAS?

Recently, PR parliamentary leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said it was okay for a Chinese Malaysian to be a deputy prime minister (DPM). It could mean creating two deputy posts, as is now the case in DAP-ruled Penang. Anwar’s original statement was only reported in a local Chinese-language newspaper. Other media did not repeat it until PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang was asked for a reaction. He said he didn’t know of any such plan within the PR. DAP chairperson Karpal Singh, meanwhile, said a Chinese Malaysian DPM shouldn’t be a problem, since the PR parties have already agreed that a Malay-Muslim would be prime minister.

The need for a Malay-Muslim Malaysian prime minister has become the default position, even among the opposition. Yet there is nothing in the Federal Constitution to state that Malaysia’s prime minister must be of Malay origin. So if convention isn’t cast in stone, is Malaysia ready for this change?

Not numbers alone

Lim

Going by numbers, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Engshould now be the parliamentary opposition leader. It’s the DAP, and not PKR, which has the higher number of parliamentary seats in the opposition alliance. The DAP has 29 seats and PKR 24. PAS has 23. But the DAP is happy to let Anwar remain as opposition leader. Evidently, politics isn’t always about the numbers.

In India, Sonia Gandhi was on track to becoming prime minster after her Congress Party won in the 2004 general election. But she nominated Manmohan Singh instead, who became the first Sikh to hold the post. Lebanon, meanwhile, is the only confessional democracy in the world where positions are filled based on religious belief. Thus, the president must be a Catholic Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of the House a Shia Muslim.

Similar to India, Malaysia inherited a parliamentary democracy from the British where the constitution stipulates that whoever has the majority support of the House is qualified to be prime minister. Article 43(2)(a) states that the Agong shall appoint as PM a Member of Parliament who has the House’s majority support.

Beyond that, however, Malaysia under the Barisan Nasional (BN) has its own formula. Yes, the BN fulfils the constitutional requirements of the prime minister being an elected member of the Dewan Rakyat, and who commands the majority support in the House. But the BN has also created its own conventions as to race and religious “requirements” for a prime minister. These are political norms, rather than rules, which have become instituted by practice. Over time, Islam and being Malay Malaysian have been conflated into the requisite identity of a prime minister until it’s taken by some as a given.

Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, as ultra a Malay as he may be, was not wrong when he said in 2000 that a non-Malay Malaysian could become prime minister. Indeed, he was constitutionally correct.

“Confluence of factors”

So what’s stopping opposition parties from thinking differently? For all the multi-ethnicity they champion in policies, why do their politics end up mirroring the BN’s?

Liew

With regards to Anwar’s candidacy for prime minister, the DAP’s Liew Chin Tong says this was “never a matter for debate” among the PR parties because there was “no other choice”. Anwar, he said, was the most qualified person from among the three parties given his past federal experience, wide networks and public persona.

“For the DAP, it wasn’t that he is Malay [Malaysian], but because he is the most acceptable to all. Politics is not mathematics but a confluence of factors, and Anwar fits these factors,” Liew, the Bukit Bendera Member of Parliament, says in a phone interview.

Political analyst and The Nut Graph columnist Wong Chin Huatconcurs on Anwar’s acceptability to most people, albeit from the position of PKR being the most centrist of the three parties.

Wong believes that while the DAP and PAS would each prefer their own party leaders as first choice to lead the PR, “they know their leaders will unlikely be accepted by other parties and the public because of their ‘flank’ positions”.

“It’s about the relative positioning of each of the three parties. PKR is the most multiracial, so as far as such values are concerned, Anwar is in the end the common denominator,” Wong says in a phone interview.

The electorate’s vote

However, it’s hard to ascertain just how much support Anwar has based on Wong’s reasoning, and how much support is still based on the default thinking that the prime minister must be Malay-Muslim.

Obama (Public domain | Wiki commons)

A sizeable number of young Malay Malaysians are not ready to accept a non-Malay Malaysian head of government. This was reflected in a Merdeka Center for Opinion Research survey, which was conducted in late 2008 during Barack Obama’s historic election as US president.

How many Malaysian voters actually think that race counts less than a candidate’s principles and abilities in administering just policies for the country’s good? If the Merdeka Center poll is anything to go by, the numbers are not encouraging. The same sentiment was at work in Penang when Lim became chief minister. Strategically, he was compelled to appoint one Malay and one Indian Malaysian deputy to assure voters that his government would represent all races.

What needs to happen, then, before the current default thinking on who qualifies to be prime minister can be successfully challenged by the majority? At least two things would have to happen first:

 the BN must lose federal power so that the current practice of filling up cabinet positions based on racial quotas can potentially be replaced by a system that is constitutional, yet merit-based; and

 race-based political parties and racial politics must be disbanded.

Between the BN and PR, which of the coalitions are able, or even interested, in facilitating such change? If it is the PR, how well is it leading the way in this?

Unfortunately, Malaysia still needs a Malay Malaysian leader to convince the majority of Malay voters about a mindset change. That is likely the hope that the PR has in Anwar and the challenge that Datuk Seri Najib Razak faces as BN chief.

No matter, what is clear is that until and unless Malaysians can put leadership qualities above race and religious criteria, and demand for such leadership, Malaysia will be stuck with the same formula of racial politics, whether from the BN or PR. 

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Is Hishammuddin involving police in greater political harassment of PR leaders when he should be asking the police to single-mindedly fight crime to make Malaysia a safe country?

commentary: YB Kit, why don't you let Lim Junior fight his own battle, everytime he is in the shit hole, you come to save his skin... He is digging his own grave and your bigger conglomerate have to cover his ass everytime he knock his head... Because of him, PR is losing ground with the Malays, not just in Penang, but the whole country. He is not so good covering his true intention of being an ultra chauvinist against the bumi(s).  Don't blame others for your son own short coming....

by Lim Kit Siang

When DAP Penang State Assemblyman for Komtar, Ng Wei Aik, lodged a police report against the Second Finance Minister Datuk Husni Hanadzlah for uttering racially inflammatory remarks on Tuesday, there was an immediate response from the Federal CID director Datuk Seri Mohd Bakri Mohd Zinin who was in Penang at the time.

Bakri asked at a news conference: “Do you want the police to fight crime or investigate political matters?”

The answer is clear and unequivocal, the first task of the police is to fight crime and to ensure that Malaysians, investors and tourists feel safe from crime and are liberated from the fear of crime – two major failures of the Malaysian police in the past decade.

Despite the establishment of a Royal Police Commission and its recommendations in 2005 to create an efficient, incorruptible, professional world-class police service in Malaysia, crime index in the country has continued to mount until the sixth Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak had to admit that it is one of the six priority challenges of his administration.

Despite all the publicity of KPI (key performance index) and NKRAs (National Key Result Areas) in fighting crime in the past year, the police has yet to break the back of the problem of high crime rate and prevalent fear of crime among Malaysians, tourists and investors – the very definition of an unsafe country!

Nobody will agree more with Bakri that the first task of the police is to fight crime and not to get involved in political matters – but this is something that the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan and the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein do not seem to grasp.

Otherwise, why is the Police harassing the Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, two Penang Deputy Chief Ministers Mansor Othman and Professor P. Ramasamy, Penang Exco members including Abdul Malik Kassim and Chow Kon Yeow and Pakatan Rakyat national leaders like Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim – with the police lodging 11 of the 12 police reports against the PK leaders themselves?

Although the Inspector-General of Police has denied bias and claimed that the police have lodged reports against politicians from both sides of the political divide, Musa has not been able to cite the instances when the Police had lodged reports against the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, Barisan Nasional Chief Ministers and Mentris Besar or taken action against them!

Can Musa provide the answers? Of course not, because this has never been done!

It is precisely because key national institutions, like the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, have allowed themselves to be used as catspaws in the Umno/Barisan Nasional political agenda and chessboards and failed in their primary duties (to fight crime for police and to combat corruption for MACC) that they have not been able to regain national and international confidence about their efficiency, competence, professionalism and integrity.

With the police recently lodging 11 reports against Pakatan Rakyat leaders, the Malaysian police must have set a record in the most number of “political” reports it had lodged in such a short span of time.

Why is this taking place under Hishammuddin as Home Minister?

Is Hishammuddin going to involve police in greater political harassment of Pakatan Rakyat leaders when he should be asking the police to single-mindedly fight crime to make Malaysia a safe country again for Malaysians, foreign investors and tourists?

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Has Najib’s New Economic Model been hijacked by Neo-NEP Umnoputras like Perkasa forcing another delay in its announcement?

by Lim Kit Siang

The assurance by the Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin that no Malaysian would be sidelined in the New Economic Model (NEM) is not convincing when from all indications, the NEM has been hijacked by Neo-NEP Umnoputras like Perkasa, forcing another delay in its announcement.

When Datuk Seri Najib Razak became Prime Minister last April, he announced that the government would introduce a new economic model for the country to ensure that Malaysia makes a quantum leap to escape the middle-income trap to become a high-income country through greater emphasis on innovation, creativity and competitiveness.

In May last year, the Second Finance Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah said the new economic model would be announced in the second half of the year.

Time is clearly of the critical essence to launch a new economic model as Husni subsequently admitted in a very frank speech in December that the country had lost a decade in economic stagnation.

In actual fact, Malaysia had lost not only one decade in economic stagnation but four decades in failing to fully realize the economic potential of the rich natural and human resources of the country, resulting in Malaysia losing out not only to other countries including Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea but at risk of being overtaken by an increasing list of other countries like Vietnam, Thailand and even Indonesia.

However, the time-line for the announcement of the new economic model has been repeatedly deferred, from last year to the beginning of this year, then to this month to coincide with the completion of Najib as Prime Minister and now to June when the 10th Malaysia Plan will be presented to Parliament.

The disruption of the plan to announce the new economic model to commemorate Najib’s first year as Prime Minister is a setback for Najib’s 1Malaysia as well as a competitive and innovative new economic model and a success for the plethora of Neo-NEP Umnoputra NGOs and NGIs to whom have been outsourced the agenda of Umno’s NEP-putras.

Malaysians and the world are wondering what new economic model of greater innovation, creativity and competitiveness could be formulated by Najib against the backdrop of reactionary and extremist pressures with irresponsible and baseless alarms like “the Chinese community will take over the country in the next general elections” and that Article 153 of the Constitution would be trampled upon with Malay interests (when they mean Neo-NEP Umnoputra interests) sidelined.

I call on the Cabinet tomorrow to make a bold policy decision to make public the draft New Economic Model and invite public consultation and input and not to allow irresponsible interest groups inimical to the 1Malaysia concept and vision to hijack and monopolise the formulation of the New Economic Model.

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Guan Eng and wife voted out of Malacca DAP committee

commentary:  and they say cronyism only happens in UMNO... pleeezzz.... aizley

Caliph Omar Abdul Aziz el Penipu wal Reject

The Star, Dec. 19, 2005

MALACCA: Party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng and his assemblywoman wife Betty Chew were dealt a severe blow when they were unexpectedly voted out of the Malacca DAP committee.

While the reasons for the shocking and unprecedented outcome are not very clear, party insiders say it could be the culmination of “years” of rivalry between former state chief Sim Tong Him and Lim whose political differences were open secrets.

One leader said this could also have been a signal of protest from supporters of former DAP secretary-general Kerk Kim Hock, who lost the party’s stronghold of Kota Melaka in the 2004 general election.

The purported feud between Kerk and Lim had been partly attributed to the defeat.
“The result only goes to show that Malacca DAP is deeply split and also that the influence of Kerk and Sim is still there,” he said.

He added the result would have an affect on DAP at the national level as Lim’s father, Kit Siang, is a party strongman.

Bandar Hilir state assemblyman Goh Leong San is the new state chairman, taking over from his mentor and Lim’s adversary Sim Tong Him, who stepped down without contesting after holding the post for 15 years.

In the state election yesterday, Goh secured 83 votes, the highest polled by the 17 people vying for one of 15 elected places in the state committee.

Lim and Chew, who is Kota Laksamana assemblywoman, garnered 27 and 33 votes respectively, putting them at the bottom of the lot.

Under the party constitution, Lim, as secretary-general, is automatically included in the state committee.

Chew, who is state Wanita chief, does not qualify for automatic inclusion.

When contacted, Lim said he supported Goh but declined to comment on the results. “Goh is the best person to ask,” he said.

Goh described the election as “simple and straightforward” but declined to comment on Lim’s situation.

Sim said he did not contest so as to make way for younger leaders. He was later appointed to the state committee.

A total of 91 party members attended the DAP state annual general meeting and election yesterday.

When contacted by The Star at around 9.30pm last night, DAP life adviser Dr Chen Man Hin said: “You are the first one to tell me about this. No comments until I see the results.”

Yet he is appointed as DAP Secretary General.





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