September 2, 2012
Book Review: Zaid Ibrahim’s Ampun Tuanku
Zaid begins his book by briefly tracing the history of Malay sultans. Unlike the Japanese Imperial family that stretches as far back as 600 BC, or the British to the 11th Century or even earlier, Malay sultans are of recent vintage. The Raja of Perlis was established only in 1834, while that of Johor only slightly older (1819).
In modeling the Malaysian constitutional monarchy along the British one, the Reid Commission assumed that Malay sultans were like English kings. That was the first major blunder. To Zaid, it also underscores the pitfall of trying to adopt wholesale foreign concepts or models, not just in law but also much of everything else.
Those English monarchs have had centuries of working with a democratically elected government. Earlier, a few of them have had to pay dearly for their errors. Consequently today their system works smoothly. Not so with Malay sultans. Up until British rule, Malay sultans were literally Gods; those sultans could actually take your life. Displease the sultan or prevent him from grabbing whatever you own including your daughter or priced kerbau (water buffalo), and you risked being beheaded, banished, or enslaved (kerah). Those sultans were not above the law as there were no laws then; they were the laws.
Malays like me have a lot to be thankful to those colonials for ending those odious royal traits of our culture. No, that is not an expression of my being mentally colonized, rather one of deep gratitude.
Malaysia has a disproportionate number of monarchs, 9 out of the nearly 40 worldwide, as Zaid and others have noted. The error in that frequently cited observation is the assumption that our sultans are comparable to those other kings and queens; they are not. There is little in common between Malay sultans and the British Queen or Japanese Emperor.
Instead, Malay sultans have more in common with the tribal warlords of Africa and Papua New Guinea, from their insular worldview to their fanciful costumes. The Papuan tribal chiefs have their elaborate colorful headgear, as well as their prominent penile sheaths which they proudly display; ours have their equally ostentatious desta and tanjak.
Like those tribal chieftains, our sultans’ too are afflicted with their feudal habits. Modernity has not erased our sultan’s medieval mentality. When Malaysia became independent, those odious habits began creeping back. Those sultans are not to be blamed entirely, however.
“The Rulers’ unwillingness to remain within their constitutional roles has been further aggravated,” Zaid writes, “by a lack of conviction and courage by the institutions that are supposed to protect and preserve [our] … constitution.” Stated differently, our sultans have many enablers. We allow them to regress. We tolerate them when they flout the rules.
Members of the Malay royal family are perfectly capable of behaving themselves and keeping within the rules if they were to be told in no uncertain terms that their tantrums would not be tolerated. Consider their behaviors during colonial and Japanese times. It was the sultans who sembah (genuflected to) the colonial and Japanese officers.
Today when these Malay princes and princesses are down in Singapore for example, they obey even the basic traffic rules. Those rajas would not dare pull their silly stunts down there; they would be immediately punished. Likewise, if one of our sultans were to skip on his Vegas casino gambling debts, our ambassador would have to quickly bail him out of the county jail.
Just as a child whose earlier tantrums had not been corrected would grow up to be an intolerable brat, likewise when our sultans strayed earlier on and there was no one to restrain them, that only encouraged them to go beyond. A few decades later their excesses would trigger the constitutional crises of the 1980s and 1990s that led to the amendments ending respectively the rulers’ power to veto legislations and stripping them of legal immunity in their personal conduct.
Both were possible because of the strong executive leadership of Prime
Minister Mahathir. Today with a government with a less-than-robust mandate and a leader with a banana stem spine, the sultans are emboldened to re-exert themselves; hence the insistence of their daulat or special status.
With that, their old brute feudal traits began to re-surface. Consider the ugly spectacle a few years back in Singapore involving the Kelantan Royal family. They tried to essentially kidnap the estranged Indonesian wife of one of the princes. Had that incident happened in Malaysia, rest assured that a “helpful” minister or religious leader would have “counseled” the poor young girl to return to her obnoxious husband.
In Singapore where everyone is equal under the law, that prince would not dare claim his special status. More importantly, no one would grant him such. Consequently that poor Indonesian bride of the prince was able to escape from her palace prison.
On a much more grotesque scale, there was the case involving a Brunei prince and his British lawyers. As the dispute fell under American jurisdiction, we get to see in open court the peccadilloes of that prince. Not pretty, in fact hideous. You can assume that his counterparts in Malaysia are no different, only that their ugly acts are willfully concealed.
As a consequence of the constitutional amendment of the 1990s, the late Yang di Pertuan Negri Sembilan was successfully sued for his unpaid debts. In the past, his creditors would not have even dared challenge him. To the royal class, those peasants should be grateful that their “tributes” were accepted.
While the royal tribunal is an advancement, its learning or even deterrent value was minimal or non-existent as the proceedings are secret. Had they been open, the lavish lifestyles and obscene unpaid bills of our sultans would be exposed. They could not then readily claim their daulat under such ugly circumstances.
Zaid advocates that those royal tribunal proceedings be open to the public, as with any court hearing; I agree. Such exposures would also help humanize our sultans, showing to the public that they are susceptible to the usual human foibles and weaknesses. Deadbeats, even royal ones, do not have daulat!
I am not trying to be cheeky here but many a times we blamed the colonial government for their ill treatments but history lessons in my days, during the late 60s and 70s did record their present brings economy, education, jurisdiction and also modernised many countries.
One economic powerhouse worth mentioning is India which, benefit substantially in adopting English as their first language. It is predicted that their economy will surpass US and China. Not forgetting many of our fore-fathers do owe their wealth to the colonial systems not the monarchy of the day.
At the end of the day it is our present education system that determines how to be critical in analysing such incidences in the form of our history lessons. But sad to say our present education system especially history only focuses in UMNO/BN and Islam.
The system teaches our next generation to greed, kill for what they think belongs and not to educationally think intelligently. They teaches them how to hold on to the engineered segregations, corruption or loss out. This kind of education only brings descension.
“In the first part I discussed the sultans’ rationale for seeking extra constitutional powers based on their claim of daulat.”
The sultans’ rationale?? For seeking extra constitutional powers? Did I miss something here?
We could have done away with the sultans but we did not. How we wish we could be that fly on the wall and be able to listen to what went on in the minds of those who later mapped the course of our country’s constitutional history. The Malays were concerned that with independence life as they knew it would be lost forever. Some viewed modernization as westernization and felt themselves being alienated in their own country by forces they had no control over. Indeed by then they had become a minority in their own country. Something must be done to stop the erosion of their traditional Malay values, stem the tide of uncontrolled immigration the floodgates to which were opened by the colonial government to satisfy the demand for labor in the tin mines and plantations where Malays refused to go. The Malays then were rural folks tied to their land, tilling in many cases not their own and in many cases mortgaging away the fruits of their labor long before they came to fruition becoming in the process slaves of the middlemen.
Set against this fast changing demographic, socio-economic and religious landscape it is no surprise that the system of Malay monarchy came to fulfill a long felt emotional need to preserve the past in the march towards political independence and all the uncertainty it brings. Indeed many Malays did not want independence at any cost. The non-Malays were apprehensive of how things could turn out once the Brits leave their shores.
Thus Malaysia’s constitutional monarchy came to be born within the context of what appears to be political federal framework. The sultans were made heads of their religion in their respective states (a portfolio the Brtis did not want to handle and were glad to ‘outsource’ it from the early days of indirect rule). Islam was given constitutional status and the Malays ‘special privileges’. Short of becoming total props on a political stage, the Malay sultans were to provide the Fourth Pillar of government safeguarding Malay interests ( in a country in which they were a substantial minority).
So where in all this mess did you Mr Musa find evidence of Malay sultans seeking extra constitutional powers for themselves? The Malay constitutional monarchy came to fulfill the emotional and political needs of the times. And now that the same system is proving to be more of an inconvenience we want it replaced and supplanted by something else.
A unilateral amendment to the contract is a concept that you Mr Musa may find it hard to understand.