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NEGERI Sembilan Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Ismail Lasim is facing increasingly difficult questions over his handling of the dispute surrounding Tuanku Muhriz Tuanku Munawir, as his latest statement appears to depart sharply from positions taken by his own administration over the past three weeks.
Ismail now says the state government has never sought to remove Tuanku Muhriz and has no authority to determine who occupies the throne.
But that assertion sits uneasily with the record.
In early Sept, shortly after the disputed proclamation was made public, Ismail reaffirmed the state government’s full support and loyalty to Tuanku Muhriz as the Yang di-Pertuan Besar.
Days later, he said he had signed the instrument seeking Tuanku Muhriz’s removal unwillingly and under duress.
He lodged a police report and described the document as invalid, unconstitutional and unenforceable, while again declaring Tuanku Muhriz the only legitimate ruler of Negeri Sembilan.
Yet the position changed dramatically within days.
The state executive council, chaired by Ismail, subsequently declared the April 19 proclamation valid and said Tuanku Muhriz’s removal was legitimate.
It recognised Tuanku Nadzaruddin Tuanku Ja’afar as the new Yang di-Pertuan Besar and said the state government would take immediate steps to implement the decision.
Ismail later confirmed that the Exco had reached the decision unanimously.
That is difficult to square with today’s claim that the state government had never sought to remove Tuanku Muhriz.
The issue is not simply whether the proclamation was ultimately valid.
That question is now also the subject of competing constitutional and customary interpretations, including the Attorney-General’s Chambers’ position that the Menteri Besar and Exco had no unilateral power to remove the Yang di-Pertuan Besar.
The more immediate political question is why the position of the state government, under Ismail’s leadership, has shifted so markedly.
The DKU has also put the spotlight on the role of Ismail’s predecessor, Datuk Seri Aminuddin Harun, saying he refused to sign the April proclamation because the requirements under Article 10 of the state Constitution had not been fulfilled.
That account matters because it undermines any attempt to suggest that the controversy can simply be traced to the previous administration.
Whatever may have happened in April, it was Ismail who became Menteri Besar, and whose signature appeared on the later instrument, and Ismail who chaired the Exco meeting that declared the proclamation valid and backed its implementation.
Now, after the Attorney-General’s Chambers rejected the premise that the MB and Exco could unilaterally act against the ruler, Ismail is presenting his administration as an outsider to the dispute — one that merely wants the customary institutions to resolve the matter.
That raises an obvious question: where was that restraint when the Exco was declaring the removal valid and recognising a new ruler?
For a Menteri Besar at the centre of a constitutional and customary crisis, changing explanations are not a minor matter. They go directly to political responsibility.
Ismail cannot simply point to adat and the Constitution and leave unanswered the actions taken by the administration he leads.
Nor can invoking Aminuddin’s earlier role explain away decisions subsequently made under Ismail’s chairmanship.
The chronology is now difficult to ignore: allegiance to Tuanku Muhriz, an admission of signing the removal instrument under duress, an Exco decision endorsing the removal, recognition of a successor, and now a declaration that the state government never sought to remove the ruler.
Each position has come from the same administration.
That leaves Ismail with a credibility problem of his own making.
At a time when Negeri Sembilan’s institutions are already under extraordinary strain, the public deserves something more than another change in position.
It deserves a clear account of what the Menteri Besar knew, what he signed, what his Exco decided and why the government’s position has shifted so dramatically.
Until those questions are answered, Ismail’s latest attempt to distance the state government from the removal process is unlikely to settle the controversy. If anything, it adds another layer to it. – September 24, 2026
