If the 16th Yang di Pertuan Agong’s wishes come true, then Anwar will continue to be Prime Minister until next year
If the 16th Yang di Pertuan Agong’s wishes come true, then Anwar Ibrahim will continue to be the 10th Prime Minister until next year.
But will he continue to be Prime Minister for the full term of five years for the 15th Parliament?
In the opening of the 15th Parliament yesterday, the Yang di Pertuan Agong in his final parliamentary address said he hoped that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim would be the last candidate for the office before his reign ends next January as history will record that he is the only Agong who had four Prime Ministers during his five-year reign.
When Malaysia had the fourth Prime Minister in 1981 in the fifth Parliament, the country was having its seventh Yang di Pertuan Agong.
When Malaysia had its fifth Prime Minister in the 10th Parliament in 2003, the country was having its 12th Yang di Pertuan Agong.
When Malaysia had its seventh Prime Minister for the 14th Parliament in 2018, the country was having its 15th Yang di Pertuan Agong.
Will the 10th Prime Minister last five years throughout the reign of the 17th Yang di Pertuan Agong in the 15th Parliament?
The 14th Parliament will go down in history as the period when a duly-elected government was illegitimately and unconstitutionally toppled by the Sheraton Move political conspiracy, leading to two “backdoor” Prime Ministers and a six-month illegal and unconstitutional suspension of Parliament, the worst polarisation of race and religious relations in plural Malaysia to keep the “backdoor” government in power at a time when social media and the information age allowed lies, falsehoods and fake news to threaten the stability and unity of societies and nations.
Malaysians will remember the ICERD ratification issue of 2018 as the first instance where an issue was concocted out lies, falsehoods and fake news which were not promptly exposed and led to the worsening of race and religious polarisation in the country.
It is an important lesson why lies, falsehoods and fake news must not be allowed free play to threaten the stability and progressive development of societies and nations and why they must be exposed and nipped in the bud — and why I had repeatedly called on the PAS President, Hadi Awang to substantiate his wild and preposterous allegations that DAP is anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist and promoting Islamophobia.
There is hope after the 15th General Election that this period of unconstitutional rule polarised governance based on lies, falsehoods and fake news – the main cause of political instability and economic crisis of the people – would end.
The Yang di Pertuan Agong said yesterday, he had provided “all the room for parliamentarians to cooperate and find a common ground on principles of unity for the future of the country”.
He said the “nearly four-year-long political crisis that has plagued the nation could have been avoided” if events leading up to the resignation of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 2020 did not transpired.
More importantly, he said, the nation would have been spared the political turmoil “if the MPs and politicians were willing to put aside their differences and unite solely on the basis of safeguarding the interests of the rakyat and this country”.
Would the Parliamentary Opposition Leader, Hamzah Zainuddin, give a positive response to the Yang di Pertuan Agong’s call to all Malaysians to “open their hearts” to the results of last November’s 15th general election – to form a stable government to guarantee political stability and generate economic growth, working on issues such as the cost of living, including subsidies for the people, and anti-corruption?
Will Hamzah offer Perikatan Nasional’s co-operation to the Anwar Government to ensure that Malaysia can achieve two objectives — to unite a very polarised plural society along racial and religious lines and to reset to return to the original nation-building principles of the nation’s founding fathers for Malaysia to become a first-rate world-class nation guided by democracy, the rule of law, good governance, anti-corruption, and a global economic, education, and social system?
That will be the test of the speech of the new Opposition Leader on the Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address in Parliament later today.