MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The Speaker now joins the flawed officials of the Mahathir epoch

THE SPEAKER OF THE DEWAN RAKYAT (THE lower house of Parliament), Tan Sri Zahir Ismail, is a former High Court judge, in office for more than a quarter of a century. Yet, like many appointed to high positions for political reliability than competence or acclaim, he is clueless about his constitutional position and his rights. That he is caught out over the conduct of another body whose members are appointed for the same reason must embarrass those who did the appointing. So when the Election Commission misled the Conference of Rulers and the House of Parliament, Tan Sri Zahir Ismail, promptly tells the world how impotent he is. But when a cabinet minister repeats the EC's lies to the House, he must apologise and act against the EC separately. Instead, Tan Sri Zahir reduces himself to shivering jelly.

He told reporters yesterday (14 October 2003) the EC should not have misled him - mark you, not Parliament but him in person - on its appointment of Puteri UMNO members as temporary election staff. Then he makes another mistake. It demeans Parliament's role but it is really the government's problem not his. When the minister in the Prime Minister's department, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, refused to apologise as PAS demanded for an error of his ways. When PAS protested, he refused to intervene but threatened the questioner with sanctions. He has no power to act against the minister, he said. He is wrong. The minister in the House is as equal to the most lowly of MPs. He could have suspended the cabinet minister, ordered him out of the House, and take any action he could against MPs. But he chose not to.

He had several options before him. He could have called the EC chairman and secretary before him in the House and ask for an explanation. The EC admitted to the Conference of Rulers of hiring Puterin UMNO members. Cabinet ministers and members of the government do not have immunity from parliamentary procedure. But in Malaysia they act as they please in the House, refusing to even answer questions by leaving it to junior officers. They treat it as a troublesome chore, not that they hold office because they are members of Parliament. They get away with it because the appointed Speaker presumes his task is to the government in office not to the MPs in whose name he presides. He seems to believe his task is protect the Government and its officials from questioning by the House. No wonder the standing of Parliament is as low as it is today.

When reporters asked him if the EC lied, this is what he said: "(You can decide from) the facts of the minister's reply, it's not for me to judge. But the Speaker never intended to initiate telling lies (to the House) ... what he (the minister) said, I accept, and I don't have the power to check." In other words, it is all right for the EC, the cabinet, the ministers to lie and defy the House, and he is powerless to act. But he can, and would, if some MP dare to pursue it further so that the minister is harrassed, he would see to it that the full weight of his powers would be brought to bear upon him. His response demeaned the House in whose name he acts.

Why am I not surprised the Speaker behaves thus? For one, the BN would not allow, after four decades of independence, the House to elect its Speaker. It would be a BN man who would be elected since it had total control of the House. But it wanted to appoint the man, not allow the House to elect. An elected official would know where his loyalties lie, and would respond differently to Speakers past and present. However powerful the minister is, he is the servant of the House, that he could not be one without being a member of either House of Parliament. But the autocratic governance of the BN has reduced the role to Parliament to a constitutional irrelevance. It is, until four years ago, a highly paid but irrelevant rubber stamp. The BN in the centre wants to control every aspect of every nook and corner of Malaysia. It would not allow the states its constitutional leeway. So when it lost control of Kelantan and Trengganu in 1990 and 1999, the state UMNO bodies in the two states distanced themselves from Kuala Lumpur.

Now that BN arrogance is challenged at every turn in Parliament and out. It is revealed in the most unlikeliest of places. And BN does not know how to react. It never allowed an alternate point of view to challenge its arrogance from within or without. Much to its discomfiture, it cannot respond to the sustained Opposition barrage of its arrogant, often ill-thought view. The ministers are now careful to stick to the official answers prepared for them by the civil servants when the Opposition, usually from PAS, asks a well-researched question. Today, they are more likely to gain experience now answering them and respond on their feet to intense questioning in the House despite being a cabinet minister for decades. Today it is a brave but foolish minister who would not answer questions asked of him by the Opposition. He cannot let his parliamentary secretary take the fall.

There is more to come. If the Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat is as marginalised, in the overall power structure the BN set up, as the EC, the Cabinet, the civil service, the judiciary, the uniformed services have, it shows how much the system rots from within. Before the Mahathir epoch, there was still the semblance of civility, with the government, however autocratic within, paying more than lip service to parliamentary supremacy. More than the destruction of institutions is the fear in UMNO and, to a lesser extent, BN, that it cannot get public support or make drastic changes to itself before it ventures into the polls.

The first Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, gave as hard as he got when answering questions in Parliament, and would often walk into the Press Room, after a particularly exhilirating encounter with the then Mr Opposition, Dr Tan Chee Koon, in which he could have won or lost, to make certain the reporters got the nuance right. Tun Razak kept to the forms although he was more autocratic in style. But he respected the Opposition enough to agree without hesitation to declare open the Sentosa clinic and hospital he built. [It is a sign of the times that that building is now a hotel!] Dato' Hussein Onn, who succeeded Tun Razak, was a laid back Prime Minister, who rarely interfered with the MPs, had time for them.

But not Dr Mahathir. He governed as an imperial and imperious Prime Minister, reducing all institutions and people around him to ciphers, brooked no opposition, behaved as is he was in absolute control. He has no respect for Parliament, ignored it, spent money freely without Parliamentary approval by dipping into the till of Petronas, the Employees Provident Fund, Tabung Haji and other off-budget agencies. Neither he nor his successor could do that for long. The off-budget agencies are all but bankrupt. Neither the Speaker nor the EC chairman and other senior officials of his administration would have survived so long if they had the quaint notion in Mahathirland of constitutional propriety and distance. There are too many senior officials and cabinet ministers who rue the day they crossed him. But this arrogance and imperiousness comes with a heavy price. When the worm turns, there is hell to pay. Which is what happens now. The cossetted supercilious respect for constitutional propriety now turns into a deliberate camoflauge to hoodwink and mislead. Parliament accepted its impotence, and none dared challenge him.

One man did. Today we see the unravelling of a once powerful government. Dr Mahathir Mohamed, reels in shock within a fortnight of his retirement that the BN does not control events. The Opposition challenges it at every turn. It cannot even decide on the date of the coming general elections without looking over its shoulder. It wanted that in August, September, October and now December, postponing it as new unresolvable problems came to light. Whether it would be in December is uncertain. This does not mean the BN would not be returned to power - for all the Opposition's new lease of life, it is still fractious and divided as ever - but it could in the end turn for the good. In the new Parliament, the BN would have to abide by the rules it jettisoned in the 46 years in office. Or be consigned to the Opposition sooner than it bargains for.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my