The Malaysian crisis is caused by our Constitution itself. It was quickly put together by the British in the hurry to extricate/exit. They looked at the similarities between Britain and (then) Malaya, they incorporated the common constitutional monarchy institution, tweaked it here and there to cater for differences such as for eg. rotation to be King amongst various Sultans. They then looked at other differences – the pluralistic racial composition and federal system of different states, and they came up with certain compromises demarcating federal and state jurisdiction, Special Privileges, Islam as the official religion along with some fundamental liberties. Much of the rest were modelled along British Westminster traditions including the importance of the British Executive Branch headed by the Prime Minister who controls and is in the position to control the Legislative Branch, the Judiciary and even the British Monarch, the Queen, who has to act on the advice of the Prime Minister.

The British system inherited by us is very different from Baron’s Montesquieu idea of dividing and separating government power into three branches – executive, legislative and judicial, each checking the other, as is supposedly the American system. The Americans adopted Montesquieu’s ideas because their Mayflower founding fathers hated the political and religious strictures of the mother country and wanted to start on clean slate, putting in all the check and balance against human nature to abuse.

This does not of course mean the present system in UK makes the all powerful British PM a despot. He cannot because much of UK’s constitution (which is not entirely written by legislation) is tradition, and tradition wise the English had fought many wars against their kings and governments for centuries to get where they are today in cherishment of their liberties. The English Judge plays fair (comparatively), the Civil Servant behaves neutral (comparatively). They don’t necessarily listen to the whispers of his all-powerful British Prime Minister.

The trouble is that we do. We took their system in 1957 giving primacy and sweeping powers to the PM and the executive Branch but we don’t have their counter-balancing traditions – instead we have “feudal traditions” of unquestioning loyalty, allegiance and obedience to the leader (since time of Malacca Sultanate). Come a strong leader like Mahathir, and in no time the office of PM controlled the rest of the institutions from Parliament, Judiciary, and Constitutional Monarchy to Civil Service to do his bidding. For this reason the Constitution had been changed umpteenth time (since 1971) to consolidate the Executive position including Article 10(4), making it a seditious act to question the government.

So whither the Constitution? It has failed us to the extent that it fails to check the untrammelled powers of the PM/Executive. Indeed it provides a system that allows him to introduce legislations, control Parliament and make further laws to buttress the Executive’s power; to manacle the other judicial branch as evinced by the 1988 Judicial Crisis when Lord President and 5 senior judges opposing the PM were sacked!

So what is there to discuss about “whither the Constitution” and “lessons to be learnt from the Perak Crisis”??? The lesson to be learnt from the larger Malaysian Crisis in last 50 years is the fundamental flaw in our constitution providing for very little check and balance against the Executive/PM’s powers!

Thats what that should be discussed. It is the fundamental problem leading us to where we are today. For the Perak case cannot be resolved by intelligent discussions when one asks who is arbiter who has authority to determine whether your points discussed are valid or invalid, constitutional or otherwise – and in larger scheme of our Constitution, who controls this arbiter….The irony is that he might well be someone (proxy for power) with whisky in one hand and a cell phone in the other directing the strings from some inner sanctum of his library!