Royalty and Loyalty: A View from the Outside

posted by din merican–February 27, 2009

www.malaysiakini.com

Royalty and loyalty

by Dean Johns
February 25, 2009

Royalty has been much in the news lately. Australian expatriate Harry Nicolaides has just been granted a royal pardon after serving five months of a three-year sentence for committing the Thai crime of lese majeste in his self-published 2005 novel, ‘Verisimilitude’.

And both sides of the constitutional contretemps in Perak are accusing the other of insulting Sultan Azlan Shah. Barisan Nasional (BN) claims that the opposition is showing disrespect for the Sultan’s legal judgment by going over his head, so to speak, to seek the opinion of a British QC over constitutional matters.

And, as I understand it, BN is accusing Perak assembly speaker V Sivakumar of contempt of royalty by not only refusing to accept the sultan’s replacement of ousted Menter Besar Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin with Zambry Abdul Kadir, but also subsequently suspending Zambry and six BN-appointed executive councillors from the House.

As always when royalty is under discussion, I find myself impossibly prejudiced. Not so violently so, perhaps, as French cleric Jean Meslier, or Messelier (1664-1729), who famously wrote in his last will and testament that he “would like the last of the kings to be strangled with the guts of the last priest”.

But I’m most certainly against inherited power and privilege on principle, on the grounds that it’s almost always at the expense of the people.

At this point I have to say that, from what little I know of it, the Thai royal family has been unusually benevolent and enlightened, and may well deserve the high regard in which it is popularly and legally held. Certainly, from all I’ve heard of him and his good works, reigning monarch King Bumiphol, seems to be justly respected and admired. But to judge by unsavoury rumours long surrounding the crown prince, the royal figure allegedly defamed in Nicolaides’ book, he’s no chip off the old block.

Of course the very word “block” sends shivers down the spines of royals and royalists, as it recalls the unhappy if richly-deserved fate of Charles 1 of England. He was beheaded, you may recall, for the treason of waging war, not only once but twice, on his own people.

A great many other kings have done this in their time, under the guise of protecting the populace. This protection racket worked a treat for centuries as – witness Meslier’s remark linking kings and priests – people believed in their ignorance or blind faith that kings were divinely appointed, much as some still fancy figureheads like the Pope or the Dalai Lama to be today.

Purging of Royal Houses

But some monarchs made such a mockery of their ‘divine right’ to rule that the whole idea eventually lost all credibility. Henry VIII of England was to me one of the key figures in bringing kingship into disrepute and disbelief.

Dubbed ‘Defender of the Faith’ by the Catholic church, the seat of his original religion, he later founded the Church of England in the name of popular nationalism. But it was actually for the sordid twin purposes of divorcing several wives and even murdering a couple of them, then stealing the Catholic monasteries’ land and property for himself, his ‘nobles’ and other cronies.

The British monarchy survived both Henry and the hapless, headless Charles 1, of course, but only by gradually becoming as powerless and people-friendly as all get-out.

There were also PR stunts like changing the family name from Saxe Coburg Gotha to Windsor to seem more British during World War 1, and forcing Edward VIII’s abdication for threatening to marry a divorced woman, let alone doing a Henry VIII. All these self-preserving efforts have since come to naught, however, thanks to the dim Princess Di and a string of pubic relations disasters ending with Dodi Fayed.

Most other monarchies have dwindled to insignificance or have entirely disappeared. Some have met a sticky fate. The French people butchered their royal family and thousands of assorted aristocrats centuries ago in a frenzy of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’.

Some other royal purges have been more peaceful. The Nepalese recently dispensed with their king without much bloodshed beyond an earlier mass-shooting of his relatives by a male member of the royal family. And the ruler of Bhutan himself took the initiative to declare his country democratic.

Some nations that have dispensed with their royals have found themselves ruled by replacements that have proved as bad or even worse. The Russians got rid of the czars only to be re-enslaved themselves under a series of totalitarian dictators.

In China, thousands of years of hellish rule by ‘heavenly’ emperors were succeeded by a 60-year reign of terror and error by Mao Tse Tung and his political heirs.

India, on the contrary, was doubly fortunate in achieving its independence in 1947, taking the opportunity to rid itself of not only its imperial oppressors, but also the Maharajahs who, as corrupt puppets of the British, had been so disloyal to their own people.

Earn loyalty

And on much the same grounds, Ihave often thought it a pity that Malaysia failed to similarly avail itself of the opportunity to dispense with its royals. Most if not all of the sultans of colonial times co-operated if not collaborated with the British in their exploitation of the people of then Malaya.

And, with all-too-rare exceptions, the sultans since 1957 have shown themselves more dedicated to their own interests than to the well being of their loyal subjects.

No wonder so many Malaysians applauded then premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad when, if for his own reasons rather than those of the rakyat, he seized on the excesses of some sultans to curtail royal privileges and immunities. The current Perak sultan, it seems to me, is among the more worthy and distinguished members of Malaysian royalty. But surely it’s not disloyal, as some have been suggesting lately, to question his legal opinion.

Malaysia, like Great Britain, is a constitutional monarchy these days. So the rakyat’s loyalty is no longer for royalty to command, demand or expect as its birthright, but to earn and inspire by its care and concern for the common good.

In other words, royalty these days is more a matter of worth than birth, and only deserving of our loyalty if it puts principles before pride, position and possessions.

As in the case, for example, of that prince of a guy, Raja Petra Kamarudin, a Malaysian of such rare royalty of spirit and loyalty to freedom and justice that the robber-barons of BN can’t rest until they shut him up.

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