{"id":695,"date":"2005-12-22T05:52:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-22T05:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/wp\/?p=695"},"modified":"2006-10-08T16:16:06","modified_gmt":"2006-10-08T16:16:06","slug":"693-of-kedahs-chief-minister-and-a-threat-to-the-spirit-of-the-federation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=695","title":{"rendered":"[693] Of Kedah’s Chief Minister and a threat to the spirit of the federation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kedah’s (tag)<\/a> Chief Minister resigns today. With that, the current acting Chief Minister is expected to be “appointed” as the new Chief Minister by the Prime Minister. My question is, since Malaysia is a federation, why should the new Chief Minister need to be chosen by the federal government instead of being elected into office by the people of Kedah?<\/p>\n

Of course, one could say that it’s representative democracy; just as Malaysians don’t elect our Prime Minister directly, Kedahans don’t get to elect their Chief Minister directly too. But let’s face it, if the Prime Minister doesn’t approve, there’ll be problem even if there’s popular support.<\/p>\n

The case is not limited to Kedah. Selangor’s Chief Minister himself was chosen into office by the federal government and wasn’t elected by the people of Selangor. The same case goes for Sabah – remember the cyclical premiership?<\/p>\n

The only few exceptions to this in recent time are Kelantan since the early 90s and Terengganu in 1999. In both cases, a nutty opposition was in power.<\/p>\n

It’s no accident that all the states with its Chief Minister appointed by the federal government are states controlled by Barisan Nasional, which is the ruling coalition. Does this look like BN is violating the principle of federation and decentralization? Though the division between state and federal power is still largely intact, if things don’t change, BN will overrun the spirit of the federation. Hell, BN’s already on that by emphasizing August 31 more than September 16.<\/p>\n

Just to note, decentralization is part of green’s principles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kedah’s (tag) Chief Minister resigns today. With that, the current acting Chief Minister is expected to be “appointed” as the new Chief Minister by the Prime Minister. My question is, since Malaysia is a federation, why should the new Chief Minister need to be chosen by the federal government instead of being elected into office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}