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The Appointment of A New MB of Johor Dato’ Onn Hafiz is a Personal Prerogative of the Sultan Under the Constitution and Should Not be Disputed.
By Mihar Dias
(C) Copyright March 2022
What happened in Johor on the appointment of the Menteri Besar should not be disputed.
The late Dato’ Rahim Bakar, a tennis partner at the Royal Lake was once a Menteri Besar of Pahang, had to retire when he could no longer serve the state at the pleasure of the Sultan.
In between our games he used to warn me to take heed of the personal prerogative powers of a Sultan in Malaysia. Looking back now I do remember that he quite often warned us never to upset a Sultan of any state in the federation. So, what happened in Johor is nothing new.
The Sultan has prerogative powers derived from the constitution and conventions as practised in the United Kingdom upon which we based our constitutional democracy. (For more authoritative views on the subject, refer to Datuk Shad Saleem Faruqi, a Malaysian legal scholar and professor of law at the University of Malaya, currently holding the Tunku Abdul Rahman Chair as Professor of Constitutional Law).
But from my own layman’s interpretation, there are four major personal prerogative powers often exercised by a monarch in a constitutional democracy, as is the case in the United Kingdom. They are the “dissolution of Parliament, the appointment of the Prime Minister, the granting of the royal assent to the legislations and also the dismissal of government”.
In the case of Johor, as a state, it is the appointment of the Menteri Besar instead of the Prime Minister which is the prerogative of the Agong.
The Sultan has personal prerogative powers on the appointment of MB. All heads of state in the Federation are aware of their personal prerogative powers and have exercised them accordingly.
Recent cases where the monarch differed with the winning party include Pahang, Trengganu, Perak and now Johor.
Trengganu was driven into a crisis at one time when there was difficulty in getting Royal assent to the appointment of Idris Jusoh as MB. I watched the goings-on from the offices of PERMINT in Kuala Trengganu where MPs in their official garb mingled waiting for the royal assent on that fateful morning when Idris had to make way for another candidate from the winning party to avoid aggravating the crisis.
So was the case for a party nominated candidate in Perak who had to bow out because he did not receive the royal assent from the Sultan of Perak.
The appointment of Onn Hafiz as MB should be accepted by all as final because it is within the personal prerogative powers of the Sultan. Challenging it would be futile since there is no legal avenue to question that decision.
Netizens may not agree with me and continue to dispute the appointment. It is your own personal prerogative, too and I do not wish to question you on your choice. But you might be treading on sacred and dangerous grounds here. If you persist you are likely to cause a problem or upset some people that could eventually be detrimental to your own health and well being.
Finally, to quote my late friend (RIP) Dato’ Rahim, “You have been forwarned”.
Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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