Today is Datuk Zambry Abdul Kadir’s 100 days as the squatter and usurper Perak Mentri Besar – and the question on everybody’s mind on Zambry’s first Black 100 Days is whether Perak would be Umno’s graveyard in the 13th national general election and Zambry the cause of Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s downfall as the last Umno Prime Minister in Malaysia.
Professor Shad Saleem Faruqi has coined the most apt and powerful imagery when he likened the Perak political and constitutional crisis to a “hydra-headed monster that cannot be eliminated by ding-dong judicial decisions”.
Shad Faruqi opined that recourse to the courts is pointless and called for a stop to “this insane and naked show of unprincipled politics”.
The only way to end the hydra-headed monster of the Perak political and constitutional crisis is to return to first principles of democracy and the Constitution as spelt out by the landmark Justice Datuk Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim judgment on the Nizar vs Zambry case last Monday that once a mentri besar is appointed, he is only answerable to the state legislative assembly and he could only be removed by a vote of no-confidence in the State Assembly and not by the Sultan.
Already, the hydra-headed monster of the Perak crisis has, to borrow another powerful imagery by and the words of Shad Faruqi, like “a malignant cancer” is “voraciously spreading to the lympn nodes of our other institutions – the Sultanate, the judiciary, the federal executive, the civil service, the law officers of the crown, the court registry, the Anti-Corruption Commission and the Election Commission”.
Shad Faruqi said: “The longer we wait, the farther the affliction will spread. It is time, therefore, to stop this madness, this divisiveness, this polarisation.”
Is Najib, the man who orchestrated the unethical, undemocratic, illegal and unconstitutional power grab in Perak in early February, prepared to divine the temper of the people, see the sign of the times and heed such a call?
Even Mother Nature is on the side of righteousness – as evident from the shrivelling in less than a month of the 19 saplings planted by usurper Zambry regime directly beneath the famous Democracy Tree in Ipoh which hosted the famous “Tree Perak State Assembly” on March 3, 2009.
If Najib is not prepared to recognise the enormity of his mistake in Perak and cut losses, the hydra-headed monster he created in Perak will mutate and mushroom into hydra-headed monster throughout Malaysia which will ruin not only his premiership but also Umno rule in Malaysia in the next general election.
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.
More than two months later, Shad Faruqi has invoked the same imagery of the Roman emperor.
Najib should take heed and assume 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.
If Najib had heard and acted on my call on February 20 for a swift and democratic resolution of the Perak crisis to avoid months of stand-off and stalemate in the Perak political and constitutional crisis, i.e.a snap Perak state elections to held within 30 days, the Perak hydra-headed monster would have been slain and the Perak political and constitutional crisis behind Perakians and Malaysians for more than two months!
How long more is Najib going to wait before he faces up to the reality that there is no viable solution to the Perak crisis other than the dissolution of the Perak State Assembly and the holding of Perak state general elections?