can the Pakatan Rakyat of 3 main parties each with a different symbol, even with winning 132 seats form the government, or even will a leader of the group viz Anwar Ibrahim take office as prime minister using “first-past-the-post” principle? I have doubt in this. So let’s put this to debate, And especially the great legal mind would do great to come up with the means bywhich article 43(2)(a) “shall first appoint a Prime Minister … a person …..in his judgment is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the members of the House” may be crossed over in the event of a Pakatan win. With recent Perak case, and the case of Pairin Ketingan of Sabah, and of Ningkan of Sarawak, on a hindsight, my intuition is that Najib of BN of one symbol would claim victory and will swear before the Yang diPertuan Agong to be the Prime Minister on the basis of having 90 seats won in Parliament. In all the 3 hindsight instances the power of the Throne had been brought to bear. It has oftentimes been said that Malaysia is governed by Parliament, Cabinet and the Rulers. And like in recent Perak case, the Yang diPertuan Agong may decide to appoint Najib (who in any event would be a care-taker PM during and immediately after the general election i.e until a new PM is sworn in) as Prime Minister. At that moment in time the issue of “voted out” will not yet arise, and will only arise after Parliament is called for its first session after the poll. And the main thing is to control over the administration of the country in the meantime. Then, like in the case of Pairi Ketingan of Sabah when there was no governor in his residence to swear him as a Chief Minister after the general election where he won quite enough seat to form a stable government had he been allowed to do so, but he wasn’t; in the meantime loyalties of elected many elected members had waned causing many to cross party line and handed over power to a leader of another party who became a Chef Minister. In the case of the 3 elected members in Perak also did exactly that. When it came to court the Highest Court of this nation agreed what happned had not offended any provision of the Perak Constitution.
Will this scenario repeat in the wake of the next GE, that is in the event of a Pakatan Rakyat of 3 different arties winning the popular votes bearing in mind that Pakatan Rakyat is not a registered society but Barisan Nasional is. When PR applied to be registered it was not granted.
Under such a scenario it would be easy to imagine the streets might be full of protesters. However such protest could in fact give the mandate to the newly sworn PM to take any drastic measures, including to curtail freedom of assembly by a declaration of emergency by the Yang diPertuan Agong, in the interest of “security of the nation”. Widespread protest will mean widespread arrests of “opposition” leaders will follow.
Very gloomy indeed. But a desparate PM Najib, given the many misdeeds alleged of him, rightly or wrongly, will be tempted to do all if only to protect himself “at all cost”. Only by remaining at PUTRAJAYA can he be assured nothing untoward could come in his way!