With Malaysia mired in a huge political, financial and criminal scandal it needs to be asked what the Head of State is doing. Or not doing.  He has the unfettered power to act to lance the political boil but has not done so.

This inactivity raises questions outside the question of using constitutional powers for the public good.  It also brings into focus the whole question of the need for and the functioning of a Malaysian Head of State.

No democracy questions the need for a Head of State, whether ceremonial as in Britain or executive as in the United States. What can be, and often is, questioned is where that Head is to be found,

Inheritance? By election of some kind? There are many variations.  In Malaysia when the British deicded to surrender their power they chose to vest the Headship in the traditional Sultans of Malaysian Federated and non Federated States. This was a choice dictated by convenience and by the fact that they intended the future independent Malaysia to follow British example with hereditary Rulers with no real power.

This in turn was because te British grip on Malaya rested not just on the fact that it held the real levers of power but also on the fiction that the traditional hereditary rulers (the Sultans) continued to have real power. That dampened charges of imperialism against Whitehall and created a class of client rulers which had everything to gain by co-operation with Britain and everything to lose by arguing.

Partly by reason of their past performances and partly because they were seen as Brtish puppets enoying a lavish life style at the expense of the common people, most of these Sultans did not enjoy a good reputation and could attract only the support of undereducated  peole of their own ethnicity.

When independence loomed Malay politicians put communal privilege and communal superiority ahead of all other consideratins and so wanted to avoid any question of the headship of the new State being held by anyone other than their client Rulers. Hence the existing, faintly absurd, system of the Sultans taking five year turns in the role of Head of State.

Unfortunately for the corrupt cabal of Malay politicians which has controlled Malaysia for decades the British, both could and did frame the Constitution of the new Malaysia.  The latter decided to follow their own model and give the Head of Sate the power of their own Monarch (never so far independtly exercised) to dissolve Parliament during its five year term.

If and when, as at present,it appears that the Administation in office is abusing its position and oppressing the people the Sultan currently acting as Agong has the power to act and the politicians have no way to stop him.   If he so acts he does so properly and in exercise of his legal powers.   If he fails to act he initiates a process that can and will lead to major constitutional reform.  Parliaments with a two thirds majority can amend the Constitution; including changing the Head of State from a buggins turn procession of outdated hereditary rulers to a fully elected Malaysian President.  One assumes that this possibility has not escaped the notice of those who currently take turns at being the Agong?

So the choice is clear as it is stark. Do one’s constitutional duty and allow the people to decide who is to govern them for the next five years or start a process which will inevitably lead to constitutional change and the disappearance of a medieval structure which has shown its failure to perform the one constitutional function that has any remaining relevance in the twenty first centuty