Democracy or Monarchy?

Democracy, as was defined in my previous post, is a system of governance by representatives elected by each of the citizen. Today, I'm going to discuss about the workings of democracy system in Malaysia (constitutional monarchy) and its flaws as well as the opposite extreme, monarchy system and its pros & cons. Then I will compare & contrast monarchy with democracy and my personal ideas regarding the solution.

Note : For non-Malaysian readers, Barisan Nasional (BN) is our current ruling party and it has 14 parties where UMNO is the leading party.

First, I will start off with the monarchy. Monarchy is a system of governance by a monarch, i.e. king or emperor. The people are the subject of the monarch and the monarch rules with divine rights. Often feared than revered, monarchy are often related and leads to dictatorship or tyranny. The monarch has the absolute power to decide on the country's fate as well as an individual's fate. Anyone who disrespects or going against (i mean the serious type, not the minor cases) the monarch are normally executed for treason to make an example for the others and to instill fear among the citizens in order to further enhance their divine rights. As was mentioned, the monarch will also decide on the utilisation of their land and labours along with the development of their country or kingdom. However, while dictatorship were generally the case, on some rare instances, monarch's power are put into good purpose and that ensures a lasting peace and prosper throughout the monarch's reign. For instance, Golden Era of China during Dynasty Tang, 100 years of peace and prosper.

So, the workings of the monarchy system is simple and obvious. Problems encountered are brought forward to a king or emperor, then after a discussion and debate between the king and his prime minister, ministers or council members, an ultimate decision is made by the king and the decision is passed down to the suppose target, be it citizens, workers or ministers in the form of royal edict. So the responsibility of the decision is borne by the king alone. Any consequences be it good or bad will improve or jeopardise the king's reputation. Certainly the king can shrug off the responsibility, perhaps partly to his ministers, but that will diminish his supposed divine rights and create doubts among his citizens and ministers, which expose himself to the risk of being overthrown if that action is perpetually done.

On the other hand, democracy system in Malaysia, Legislative division specifically, the decision-making involves working the bills through the Parliament before it is formally implemented as law. First the Prime Minister Department will issue a bill. Then it will go through the House of Common (Dewan Rakyat) for debates. I will not explain the workings in detail since we learnt it in our History text. In short, the 2nd and 3rd reading involves the debate between the ruling party and the opposition. Then the bill works its way through the House of Lords (Dewan Negara) and finally the signature of Yang Di-Pertuan Agong (our king, for those non-malaysian readers) serves as a verification of the bill before it's implemented as written law. The House of Lords and signature of the king are not factors to be concerned with since they can only delay the bill but not veto against it.

The problem lies within the House of Common. The majority of the MPs will form the ruling government, and thus more than 50% of the sitting MPs are from BN. With the implementation of the Whip System, every BN MPs are forced to vote in favour of their party's decision. Anyone who vote against it is forced into resignation. With this Whip System, every bill issued by the Prime Minister Department will be automatically implemented if it's a minor bill. A major decision will involve 2/3 majority of the sitting MPs. (Thank god that the opposition is stronger now and BN has less than 2/3 majority. They used to have more than 2/3 which is a 100% passing rate for any bill.) Thus far there is no resignation of MPs to be seen except for Zaid Ibrahim (yea he's a man) for going against the abuse of ISA. Some (or maybe most) current government MPs are just trying to stay low and reap their reward or profit from their position through both legal and illegal means, i.e. corruption.

Another main problem of democracy system that the responsibility bearer is often elusive. The bill is made in the Prime Minister Department. Although the Prime Minister himself may be in charge of the bill, but the true responsibility lies in the hands of the MPs within the Parliament. Whatever effect or consequences that may follow up, the responsibility is shared among the voters amongst the MPs. Prime Minister or even MPs themselves can often shrug off their responsibility by stating that it was a majority decision and escape justice.

Furthermore, given the Whip System, they are highly likely to pass the bill (all bills if more than 2/3 sitting MPs from the ruling party) and reap the credit if their ideas succeed and shrug it off easily should they fail. Further more, Separation Of Powers does not exist in practice. Judiciary, Legislative and Executive divisions are interrelated. The head of the judge is appointed by the Prime Minister. Executive is obviously manned by the ruling party members and the ruling party MPs has the majority in the Parliament. To make things worse, the current government is corrupted, MPs and people are tradable with money and the current government will protect their precious throne by all means. Even if people are aware of the truth behind democracy, their civil consciousness are subjugated by ISA. In some sense, don't you think that the current government is transformed into an organisational form of monarchy? Hidden behind the 'curtains' of democracy and instilling fear to the people through ISA, taking advantage of their fear of getting detained.

Sadly we are not adopting the American political system, where the MPs can vote across parties and the President has the absolute power to veto against a bill, but not in favour of it. A refined democracy system as mentioned by my friend, but it won't be effective due to the corruption amongst MPs and parties (people are tradable). But of course ISA is the real obstacle towards the real democracy, and certainly BN will not give it up as it's their ultimate defence.

So, whose side are you on? Democracy or Monarchy? Well, in Western countries, their Democratic system works well as the citizens are given a lot of freedom, i.e. freedom of speech and thoughts etc. However, our country differs from theirs in terms of racial discrimination. Freedom of speech is limited and the Malays' special rights are unquestionable. Perhaps democracy only truly works in a country with equal rights. But in general, if given no options but monarchy or democracy, then I will still side with Monarchy system. Reasons? If we have a wise king, things will work far better than democracy. On the other hand, should we get a dictator as our monarch, then the responsibility is clear and his reign will not last long and will be overthrown eventually. The benchmark for the measurement of performance that I used is based on the responsibility of the governor or ruler. It might be different for each of you and hence you might disagree with me.

I'll describe one of the differences of criteria between a wise ruler and a dictator or power-hungry governor using examples. In ancient China, 刘邦 (Liu Bang) for example, it wasn't his wish to be a king, but the situation forced him to be one. In the era of 3 kingdoms, 刘备 (Liu Bei) will not revolt against the government and created his own kingdom if not for the tyranny of 曹操 (Cao Cao), and once again the situation around him has made him a king. Taking things nearer, George Washington retired from his presidency and returned to Mount Vernon to be a blacksmith even though the people wished that he could continue his presidency. Wise rulers in the olden days will not become rulers if given a choice, because they knew that the responsibility of a ruler is too heavy to be borne alone, yet they had to. They serve their country and the people even if they are dressed in an emperor's robe (民为上，君次之）, following the teachings of Confucius. In contrary, nowadays, the leaders all flock to the the top position like bees to honey. By any means, legal or illegal, honour or deceit, they will get it done. They succumb to their own greed and the promise of wealth and power of the top position has somehow ripped their humanity away from them. As was mentioned, in democratic system, one can easily shrug off their responsibility. Thus, good reward, low responsibility, why not take it?

Personally I would suggest a democratic monarchy system, which merges the pros and try to get rid of the cons of both systems. A country ruled by one elected ruler, perhaps a President if not a king. And this President will have the absolute power to decide on country matters. He or she may hold a conference during a decision-making process and decide on the ultimate decision on major issues and thus he will bear the responsibility if things do not turn out as planned. This president has no rights to determine a person's life and death, even if that person is a criminal. It will be handed over to a independent and separate entity, Judiciary division that is not subjected under the rule of the President to determine the person's guilt and hence the convictions. The promotion or appointment of the judges within the system will be done by an independent commission. Notice that I did not mention the Legislative division. Well, in my opinion, for Malaysia, the Parliament is just a place where the decision-making process are made democratic in appearance, but not in essence. It's a place for pointless debates which ultimately BN will mostly prevail as the speaker is from BN and thus will side with them.

In this system that I mentioned, certainly the President can delegate his powers to different ministries just as the ones we have. However, note that he should appoint ministers with required and sufficient knowledge of that particular field instead of our current 'fill in the blanks' trend. Due to the absence of Parliament, the President will have a heavy workload and hopefully is adequate to shun away the 'profit-seekers'. There will be an election hosted by an independent commission (involve foreign members if necessary) every few years (maybe 5 if we follow our current system) for a new President or to continue the presidency of the current President. The people has the rights to decide on which of the candidate is fit to become their leader and every citizen of the country is eligible for nomination. In short, what I am suggesting is that we should have a ruler that will serve the people instead of us serving him or her. This ruler will rule with his wisdom and take the consequences of his action like a man. And this ruler is removable, which is a safety valve against dictatorship.

Well, it's just a rough idea, I left out plenty of details regarding my system since I have mentioned, I am no expert in these fields. A lot of refinement will be needed if the system is to work, let alone effective.

In the short run however, as I have mentioned in my previous post, we should let the citizens vote for their own Prime Minister. But at the mean time, I think that our country need a change. We need a change of government, despite the fact that the current government is heavily corrupted, to show the citizens of Malaysia that our government is changeable.

So much for today. See you guys in few days time. Enjoy the post.