Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📕

a motion of formal reproof directed at a royal personage was accepted by the House. In the past, the government had rejected such motions, insisting they were prohibited by the Constitution and the Sedition Act.

Deputy Prime Minister Ghafar Baba, who introduced the motion, indicated that condemning Sultan Iskandar was a step towards reforming the monarchy to safeguard its long-term survival. If the government did not put an end to transgressions by the Malay rulers, he said, "the people" might lose patience and overthrow the monarchy, as they had done in other countries. He quoted a Malay proverb with an implicit warning to the monarchy: A just king is adulated, but an unjust one is to be shunned.[54]

The government's target was the monarchy's constitutional shield: Article 181(2) said "no proceedings whatsoever shall be brought in any court against the ruler of a state in his personal capacity". On government instructions, Abdul Majid Idris, second in line to succeed his father as Sultan of Johore, was charged with assault. Although he was subsequently acquitted when the victim accepted RM1,000 in compensation, an arrangement permitted under Malaysia's criminal code, his prosecution was highly significant. Royal personages below the level of sultan rarely had been charged previously, even though they were not protected from prosecution. Indeed, the prince was only the second leading member of Malaysia's royalty to face a criminal offence, the first being his father back in the 1970s.

The Constitution (Amendment) Act 1993, introduced on 18 January, removed judicial immunity from rulers in their private capacity, though they still would be protected in the exercise of their official functions. As the bill was not made retroactive, it ruled out prosecution for past offences. In the future, though, the long arm of the law would reach inside royal palaces, breaching their customary legal sanctity. A late compromise measure stipulated that sultans accused of breaking the law would be brought before a "special court" rather than the courts for commoners. Sultans and appointed state governors would be unable to pardon themselves, their wives or their children. The post-1969 gag on legislators debating royal misdeeds would be lifted: No member of Parliament or a state Legislative Assembly "shall be liable to any proceedings in any court" for anything they say about the king or the sultans, though they would still not be permitted to advocate "the abolition of the constitutional position" of the king or sultans.[55]

In pushing the amendments through Parliament, Dr. Mahathir ignored their formal rejection by the sultans, moving Malaysia close to the brink of another constitutional crisis. He said the sultans "must heed the advice of the government", and if they failed to endorse the amendments, the courts would settle the matter.[56] Opposition members who earlier condemned Sultan Iskandar's beating of Douglas Gomez did not support the legislation, even though they agreed that no ruler should be above the law. Their reservations were part of a backlash that questioned Dr. Mahathir's motives in wanting to subdue the monarchy so forcefully. The suspicion was that Dr. Mahathir, having greatly expanded the prime minister's executive power over the years, was using royal misdeeds as a pretext to eliminate yet another check and balance in his domineering stewardship of the government.[57] "One question that is forefront in the minds of Malaysians is whether the removal of the rulers' immunity will only result in the greater immunity of the political leadership in government," said Lim Kit Siang, the opposition leader.[58] Declared an editorial in the Bar Council's journal, "Far from protecting the institution, the amendments will, in fact, arm the executive with the power to subjugate the rulers through threats of prosecution for any offences, however minor. The rulers will be at the mercy of the executive."[59]

Dr. Mahathir had calculated shrewdly and waited for the right time to strike, having discarded from the Cabinet and UMNO's Supreme Council those politicians who sympathized or sided with the monarchy during the first crisis. He figured that with the growth of the Malay middle class, fewer Malays would look to the monarchy for symbolic protection. They owed their improved status to specific policies, and they would have faith in the political system that delivered those policies to secure their future. In case the rulers were slow to pick up on these trends, Dr. Mahathir held their feet to the fire.

Unleashed anew, the press paraded a catalogue of royal horrors that had been known only to a few insiders for years and deemed unfit to print. Effectively, the Sedition Act was suspended, since it required the attorney general to authorize a prosecution and he was not about to do that. As the dark and expensive side of the monarchy was exposed, nothing was off limits except direct attacks on the institution itself.

State-owned Radio Television Malaysia aired old movies that portrayed the rulers in ancient times as base or brainless. An opposition member revealed in Parliament that Sultan Iskandar had not been a model king during his 1984-89 reign after all. He had killed his caddy with a golf club. An UMNO member of parliament said the sultan and his eldest son were implicated in 23 incidents of criminal activity over the past two decades, including rape, assault and murder.[60] A former group editor and a senior reporter of a Malay-language newspaper published their first-hand account of being harassed by the king in 1985. They had been summoned to his Johore palace and threatened, after the national daily criticized his gift of a rare Sumatran rhinoceros to a zoo in Thailand.[61] The sultan had used his private army, the 337-man Johore Military Force, established with British help in 1886, to "aid and abet" some of his "wrongdoings".[62]

With scant regard for their historical role in protecting the Malays or their current obligation to uphold Islam, the rulers had accumulated enormous wealth at the expense of fellow Malaysians. They were among the main beneficiaries of government policies aimed at eradicating poverty, being guaranteed millions of dollars in profits from secret allotments of shares