The Malaysian system operates on a Westminster parliamentary democracy with three core branches—Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary—that provide separation of powers and checks and balances.
The Judiciary acts as an independent check on both the executive and legislative branches to ensure actions comply with the Federal Constitution.
The Parliament (Dewan Rakyat/Dewan Negara) checks the executive through debates, questioning ministers, and passing motions of no-confidence against the Prime Minister.
The Yang di-Pertuan Agong acts as the ceremonial executive, acting on advice but serving as a final check on the dissolution of Parliament and appointing the Prime Minister based on majority confidence.
The checks and balances system is rather a means of slowing the process of governmental decision-making so that the result is based on compromise, consensus and bipartisan cooperation.
The Prime Minister is supposed to work with Parliament to fashion legislation that is agreeable to both political parties and represents the best effort to achieve unity, while the Parliament is to ensure that the executive branch is fully informed and supportive of the legislation and has opportunities to provide input on the final legislative proposal.
The Judiciary, if there are questions and concerns about the legislation, can view the law as within the boundaries of the Constitution.
The checks and balances system is currently undergoing a major test of its ability to resolve policy issues and controversies as a divided and often angry Opposition and a docile government clash with those in opposition to the legislative and regulatory agenda.
The future for a strong system of checks and balances in Malaysia is bleak.
There is no freedom of information act, nor is there likely to be one within the foreseeable future.
The Official Secrets Act is used to hide many aspects of public administration within the civil service.
Ministries are very unforgiving to the media and wont supply information.
General transparency of government is extremely low.
With the latest revelations about the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), the body is corrupt itself.
The MACC is not independent as the Attorney-General must give it permission to go ahead with any prosecution.
There are many within the political elite the MACC won’t investigate.
Public perception is that the MACC itself has been used as a tool to persecutive political enemies.
The lack of checks and balances within government is partly the cause of corruption and poor public policy making.
This is a major underlying issue requiring attention, if the country is going to succeed in the challenges ahead.
FLK (leekhean.foo@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.