Professor Shad Faruqi’s latest Star weekly column “Reflecting on the Law” on “Put interest of the nation first” and how the Perak crisis has become a “hydra-headed monster” should be compulsory reading for the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his Cabinet.
Shad Faruqi has made many points which I had tried in the past three -and-a-half months to communicate to the Prime Minister and the Barisan Nasional leaders but to no avail.
For instance, Shad Faruqi started his article thus:
“THE Perak political crisis can be likened to a malignant cancer that is voraciously spreading to the lymph nodes of our other institutions – the Sultanate, the judiciary, the federal executive, the civil service, the police, the law officers of the Crown, the court registry, the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Election Commission.
The longer we wait, the farther the affliction will spread. It is time, therefore, to stop this madness, this divisiveness, this polarisation.”
One consistent point I had made for over three months is that the constitutional and political impasse has precipitated a new crisis of confidence in credibility, legitimacy and integrity of all the key national institutions of the country, whether the police, election commission, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency, the civil service, the judiciary or the monarchy and impaired Malaysia’s international image and competitiveness to face up to the world’s worst economic crisis in a century.
In March, I had invoked the imagery of “Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burns” to deplore Najib’s failure to act boldly to end the protracted political and constitutional crisis in the face of the world economic crisis.
Shad Faruqi is now invoking the same imagery when he said:
The country as a whole is more important than the fate of Barisan or Pakatan in Perak.
In Rome, Nero played the fiddle while the city burned. We should not allow that to happen to us.
Perak politicians have no right to paralyse the rest of the country or to distract us from the many urgent and daunting tasks staring us in the face.
Najib should take heed and he should take responsibility for the unethical, undemocratic, illegal and unconstitutional power grab he had orchestrated in early February by agreeing to dissolve the Perak state assembly to return the mandate to Perakians to elect the government of their choice.
In February 20, I had called for the swift and democratic resolution of the Perak crisis to avoid months of stand-off and stalemate in the Perak political and constitutional crisis – in a manner which could be accepted by all Perakians without poisoning the Malaysian body politic for years and decades so that national energies could be mobilized to face the looming economic crisis.
If my proposal for a snap Perak state elections to held within 30 days had been acted upon by Najib, the Perak political and constitutional crisis would be behind the state and nation for more than two months!
As Shaq Faruqi has perceptively pointed out, the courts cannot supply any satisfactory solutions to the Perak political and constitutional crisis.
Najib should not drag his feet any longer but rise to the occasion to agree to the dissolution of the Perak State Assembly so that the crisis could be behind all Perakians and Malaysians within 30 days.