A matter of pragmatism

The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke

The BN takeover procedures were more or less completed today with the swearing in of the new BN Menteri Besar. Datuk Seri Nizar reported to work as usual this morning but he and his exco members were shocked to see his office being emptied of its contents. It's fine that they want to force him to resign but to clear away his office by force and to have FRUs surrounding the place has just turned poor Perak into a police state. Not only that, people going to mosque without armed weapons are fired with tear gas as if a massive vicious riot has just broke out. Gosh, they should spend those cannister of tear gases in controlling crimes and gangsters instead of abusing the poor rakyat.

I'm still trying hard to make sense out of this whole fracas. Let's take a step back and look at it in the most possible simplistic way that even the man on the street can understand. Forget about all those legal jargons and constitutional issues. I could narrow down to the most pressing reason why a minimum of by-elections is needed at least and in the wider (if possible) sense, the dissolution of the assembly. It's a matter of pragmatism really and it does not need a lawyer to figure this out. This gotta to do with the three independent candidates.

Ok, the situation now is that they have just turned pro-BN. No matter what kind of reasons they give, the people are angry, frustrated and dissappointed. Especially the folks in Jelapang. Now the 3 kataks are in the so-called "majority" party. Fine. But does the Sultan considered whether how those three are even going to carry out their jobs as assemblymen properly? It's practically impossible that the Jelapang service center will ever open again! 12 000 people voted in majority of the DAP will definitely be after Hee's blood. She can't even step foot in the area again. The same goes for Behrang and Changkat Jering. In that case, they are as useless to even sit in the Perak assembly and there is no point in them for holding office if their purpose is just to make up for the numbers for BN. Assemblymen are there to serve, not to goyang kaki and hide away when they incur the wrath of the rakyat. It's just common sense that the three seats be vacant since the 3 assemblymen can no longer fulfill their role properly. This is the most basic and broken down single reason that is needed to prove that the 3 seats has no legal business to exist in the legislative body in the first place and therefore do not add the numbers to the "majority" of the BN.

The situation is still looking tense even after Zambry is sworn in. Nizar has bravely held on in maintaining that he's the 10th MB and that he's not resigned. If what the Sultan did was unconstitutional, this meant that Perak is having two MBs right now where one government is forcefully imposed while the other is being repressed but still fighting on. A constitutional crisis indeed. This battle will materialise all the way up to the Federal Court and if the resignation letters are deemed to be valid, it would reflect badly on the Royal House. But still, I having doubts that the judiciary would do something as adventurous as this. Most probably, they will construe it in such a way that the Sultan's interpretation of the Perak constitution actually goes according what was written. Ahhh..I guess that's the wonders of Statutory Intepretation ehh..With the weekends and Thaipusam holidays coming up, any legal action that the PR wants to take will have to wait until Tuesday. Until then, it'll be a furious exchange of words.