By P Gunasegaram
THE numbers clearly indicate that neither interim prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad nor prime minister wannabe Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has a simple majority, indicating a stalemate.
As a minority government is susceptible to failure and a unity government is virtually on the rocks, the ultimate long-term solution may be the dissolution of Parliament and calling for elections. With the latest developments, this could be as soon as March 2.
Mahathir told the press earlier today that it was decided that a special session of Parliament will be held on March 2 to decide who becomes PM. If no one has a simple majority, Parliament will be dissolved.
The highest support, going by current known alignments, is for Anwar who commands at least 92 MPs (PKR 39, DAP 42 and Amanah 11 – see table) against Mahathir’s 64, still not enough for a majority. If over the next three days, Anwar can find some way to get an additional 20 seats to back him up to take the tally up to 112, he will become prime minister.
That may still be preferable to a so-called unity government being espoused by Mahathir which does not look like it has much chance of succeeding given that Umno and PAS have firmly said no to that project if DAP is in the arrangement.
Considering that DAP now has the largest block of MPs at 42 or nearly 20% of the total number of MPs of 222 and that it represents a large block of Chinese voters, there can be no unity government without DAP.
The unity government is moot now because none of the parties with a significant number of seats in addition to DAP such as PKR (39), Umno (39), and PAS (18) supports it, with the only major ones supporting it being Bersatu (26), GPS (18), Azmin’s faction (11) and Warisan (nine) for a total of 64 – far short of unity.
With Mahathir being firmly opposed to Umno joining the unity government and Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition partners firmly entrenched within the coalition which supports Anwar, Mahathir seems extremely unlikely to get a majority.
Mahathir’s unity government is so far a non-starter with PH withdrawing support for Mahathir along with Umno and PAS, leaving the interim prime minister in limbo.
The strong and valid criticism of the so-called unity government is that it puts all power in the hands of Mahathir who will decide ministerial appointments and will cherry-pick who he wants from Umno and PAS as well for the Cabinet.
While there are no constitutional precedents for the current situation in Malaysia, there are cases of this in other countries. The convention or usual practice elsewhere is to give the chance to form a minority government to the group which has the highest support in terms of MPs.
This would mean PH under Anwar. But this minority government is unlikely to be formed as the special session of Parliament sits on March 2 instead of the original March 9.
According to Wikipedia, in the 2017 election in the UK, the Conservatives won the most seats but lost their majority in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by Theresa May, formed a minority government, with 317 seats, on June 9, 2017.
On June 26 the same year, the Conservatives did a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party for a “confidence and supply” arrangement. For much of Boris Johnson’s prime ministership up until the 2019 general election, the government was a minority government.
In an earlier instance, according to Wikipedia, the Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson, formed a minority government for seven months after the election of February 1974. That situation lasted until the prime minister called another election in October that year, following which the Labour Government obtained a tiny majority of three.
The following administration also became a minority government after the collapse of the pact between the Labour Party and the Liberal Party in 1977. The then British prime minister James Callaghan’s government fell in March 1979 as the result of a vote of no confidence which was carried by a single vote.
Considering that a minority government may be viable, the first line of action would have been for the King to give the opportunity to Anwar and PH to form the government first and to get the numbers necessary to hold on to the majority against any no-confidence motion that may be tabled at the forthcoming parliamentary session, originally set for March 9.
That may have been the best move to ensure that there is no need for a new election and to reflect the will of the people from the last election as much as that is possible.
However, as Mahathir told the press earlier today, a special session of Parliament will be held on March 2 to determine who will have a majority in Parliament. If there is no majority, then elections will be called, he said.
This will effectively shortcut the process with the vote at Parliament set for March 2. While Anwar stands a far better chance at getting a majority than anyone else in the next three days, right now Parliament looks like it will be hung.
Dissolution seems the most likely outcome and the ultimate solution. – Feb 27, 2020
