PM has no choice but to resign

 

By Murugesan Sinnandavar

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has finally come out to make an offer to form a unity government with bipartisan support from MPs across party lines.

A commendable move. However, it is a little too late in the day.

This call should have been made at least a year ago when he had his slim majority and just before the second wave of the pandemic was about to hit us.

The PM didn’t make the call back then. He didn’t even do it when Parliament reconvened for a special sitting last month.

He let loose members of his bloated Cabinet to run the show as they wished, ignoring all advice from experts and members of the opposition. He then advised the King to declare a state of Emergency and suspended Parliament.

He didn’t talk about the need for checks and balances back then. He didn’t call upon opposition leaders to join forces to fight the pandemic when he had the power.

He held absolute power for six months during the Emergency and ran along with it. The results are here for all to see. Daily Covid-19 cases are in the region of 20,000, the daily death rate is the hundreds and our economy is in tatters.

We the people are virtually on our knees now due to the callous mishandling of the crisis by his team.

Last week, a few Umno MPs openly declared that they had withdrawn their support for the PM.

In an act of defiance, the PM claimed both to the King and to us the people that he still commanded a majority.

This week, he could no longer run away from the inevitable.

As the PM had rightly pointed out in his speech, he now has only two options. Resign or request the King to dissolve Parliament.

Only now, he is making a call for a unity government, presumably with him still at the helm.

In an attempt to take the moral high ground, he went on to claim that it would be an easy but irresponsible option for him to resign now; in a situation where no one has a clear majority.

In doing so, he just acknowledged the elephant in the room — that he does not have a majority.

With all due respect, it is not up to him to claim that no one has a majority.

That judgment is within the powers of the King, under Article 43(2)(a) of the Federal Constitution.

Article 43(4) of the Federal Constitution provides that the PM “shall tender the resignation of the Cabinet” if he “ceases to command the confidence of the majority members of House of Representatives”.

The wording is crystal clear. The constitution did not use the word “may” but used “shall”. It means that he must resign.

In the event he resigns, the King can then proceed to appoint a new prime minister under Article 43(2)(a) of the Federal Constitution.

The PM did not enunciate what might happen if he chooses to call for the dissolution of Parliament.

The King is empowered under Article 43(4) to refuse the dissolution and exercise his powers under Article 43(2)(a) to appoint a new prime minister. This happened during the Perak constitutional crisis in 2009.

With his own admission that he does not command a majority, it is now not up to him to call for a unity government. His government has in fact collapsed.

That call is now for the incoming prime minister to make.

All that is left for him to do now is to go through the formality of tendering his resignation. - FMT

Murugesan Sinnandavar is a lawyer and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.