Emergency 2021: An appraisal

 

On Jan 11, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, upon advice by the government, issued a proclamation of emergency that covered the whole of the federation. The said proclamation of emergency ended on Aug 1 after the government decided against advising the Agong to extend the said proclamation beyond the end date, except for a fresh proclamation of emergency for the state of Sarawak from Aug 2 to Feb 2, 2022.

The proclamation of emergency of 2021 lasted a total of nearly seven months or 203 days. During the emergency, several emergency ordinances were promulgated by the Agong on advice of the government.

One of the earliest ordinances promulgated suspended the sitting of Parliament and state legislative assemblies, and right up to the last days of August, Parliament - the country’s highest legislative body - was barred from sitting. The government only advised the Agong to allow Parliament to reconvene after much pressure from many quarters, including the opposition, civil society, the Malay rulers and the people themselves.

Apart from that, an emergency ordinance was also promulgated to amend the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (also known as Act 342). The amendment raised the amount of compound that may be issued under the Act from RM1,000 to RM10,000 for individuals and RM50,000 for corporations. This particular ordinance had wide-reaching ramifications for the ordinary rakyat, as all across the country people were issued exorbitant compound notices.

When the proclamation of emergency was declared, the government claimed that it was in order to deal with the worsening Covid-19 situation in the country. The government claimed that it needed these emergency powers for this purpose, and suspending Parliament was purportedly to allow them to ‘focus’ on the pandemic.

Official government channels such as RTM and Bernama did their part in trying to ‘sell’ the need for the emergency by repeating the government’s spiel on the issue. The government even added a sign off for official letters to ‘Prihatin rakyat: Darurat memerangi Covid-19’ (English: Care for the rakyat: Emergency to combat Covid-19).

We’re much worse off

With all these efforts to convince the people of the need for the emergency, has the emergency succeeded in dealing with the pandemic?

The answer would be a resounding no.

On Jan 11, the first day of the emergency, the country logged in 2,232 new cases with 138,224 confirmed cases. The day also recorded four deaths, bringing the total number of deaths to 555.

On Aug 1, the last day of the emergency, the country logged in 17,150 new cases, with the number of confirmed cases at 925,965. A total of 160 deaths were recorded that day, with 9,184 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

There is no noticeable reduction in the number of daily cases or deaths in the near seven months of emergency. Rather, we are worse off coming out of the emergency than we were going into it.

After the end of the emergency, the government issued a statement to inform the public that Act 342 is still in operation and therefore the end of emergency had no bearing on the movement control order (MCO) that is in force even now. This confirms what many have pointed out before this; that Act 342 was more than sufficient to equip the government with the necessary powers to control movement and impose SOPs.

It is abundantly clear that the proclamation of emergency issued on Jan 11 has failed to make an impact on the Covid-19 situation in Malaysia. In the final analysis, it is reasonable to conclude that the government has used the emergency to suspend democratic checks and balances on its conduct and act without legislative scrutiny.

Surely, this goes against the spirit and intention of the framers of our constitution in giving the government discretion under Article 150 of the Federal Constitution to advice the Agong when it comes to proclaiming an emergency.  - Mkini

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SYAHREDZAN JOHAN is a civil liberties lawyer and political secretary to Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.