TODAY I DO NOT WANT TO COMMENT ABOUT SELANGOR

So allow me to take a rest today and forgive me for not writing anything, as you can read the many opinion pieces and reports regarding the Selangor MB Crisis that Malaysia Today has carried. It is, after all, sometimes good to take a break from writing and I think maybe this break will be good for me after ten years of writing article after article since 13th August 2004.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

So much has been said about so many issues by so many people over the last few days regarding the Selangor MB Crisis that I really need not say anything any more. What needs to be said has already been said more than once so what more can I say that has not been already said by so many people? And many of these people who have been giving their opinions are experts such as lawyers, law lecturers, constitutional law experts, politicians, leaders, and so on, whereas I am none of the above.

So maybe today I shall just take a rest and not bother to write any article regarding Selangor although I have received a few messages from various friends who asked me: when will you be writing your ‘I told you so’ article?

Why should I write an ‘I told you so’ article? I asked them, and they replied that because what you said was going to happen did happen so normally you will write an ‘I told you so’ article just to rub salt into the wounds.

I would never do that. Rubbing salt into the wounds is so cruel. It is bad enough that someone has suffered a wound, which already hurts as it is, so why would I want to write an ‘I told you so’ article and make that wound hurt even more?

I know I already predicted certain things and what I predicted has happened. But I suggest we leave it at that and not make them suffer even more by writing an ‘I told you so’ article although I did tell them so earlier and what I told them has come back to bite them in their posterior.

I mean do you really want me to keep repeating myself? I already said that His Royal Highness the Sultan of Selangor decides who shall be the Menteri Besar. No doubt many disagreed with what I said then, but today that has been proven true and even legal experts now concur although when I first said it many of these experts kept quiet and said nothing.

So there is no longer any need for me to reinforce that point since the legal experts have already said the same thing because if I repeat this then people might think I am rubbing salt into the wounds by saying ‘I told you so’. Hence I am not going to talk about this.

The other thing I said was that Khalid Ibrahim is already the Menteri Besar so, being the incumbent, he need not prove he still has the confidence of the majority of the House and instead those who want him ousted need to prove that he does not have the confidence of the majority of the House.

HRH the Sultan, on the advise of the legal experts, ruled the same and now many legal experts have commented that HRH did the correct thing by not removing Khalid as the Menteri Besar since it has not yet been proven he does not have the confidence of the majority of the House. Hence since many have already said this I really do not need to talk about it any more lest it be seen as an ‘I told you so’ statement. So let’s not talk about that as well.

I also talked about the Selangor state constitution and how the Sultan appoints a menteri besar who in HRH’s judgment or opinion commands the confidence of the majority of the House. The fact that PKR, DAP and PAS each submitted letters representative of 44 of the 56 members of the House proposing Khalid as the menteri besar would be regarded as the confidence of the majority.

I further added that once appointed the Sultan has no power to sack the menteri besar and that he has to voluntarily resign. And if the Sultan cannot sack the menteri besar, then neither can the party that he represents. The fact that many legal experts and politicians comment that morally, rather then legally, Khalid should resign strengthens this argument even more since they raise the moral rather than legal issue.

Hence since all this has already been said by no less than the experts themselves why do I need to talk about it? It is better that I refrain from repeating what I had said earlier and which the experts are also now saying lest I sound like a stuck record and be seen as rubbing salt into the wounds by saying ‘I told you so’.

Taking all this into consideration I have decided that today I shall not be writing any article about all these issues, which will only be a repetition of everything I have said earlier and which many people have also been saying over the last few days.

So allow me to take a rest today and forgive me for not writing anything, as you can read the many opinion pieces and reports regarding the Selangor MB Crisis that Malaysia Today has carried. It is, after all, sometimes good to take a break from writing and I think maybe this break will be good for me after ten years of writing article after article since 13th August 2004.

Oh, and incidentally, tomorrow is Malaysia Today’s Tenth Anniversary so this break from writing is sort of good timing on the eve of that anniversary.