William Gladstone (1809 – 1898), four times British Prime Minister, was defeated by no-confidence votes but went on to become one of the greatest Prime Ministers in the UK's history.
(Revised on 21 Sept 2008)
1. We cannot deny that defection – from either side – is against the people’s mandate. It is the case that in this country, the ballots are deemed as the people’s last words, and that the rule of the game is, whoever commands the majority support of the Parliament is entitled to rule.
2. But will ‘chaos’ happen to our system of democracy if the government of the day could be toppled by the defections of MPs? For his attempt to topple the BN government by mass defections, the Prime Minister has even called Anwar Ibrahim a "threat to the economy and national security".
3. But then this has happened in many democratic countries governed by coalition governments such as Australia, Canada, Italy, Israel, India, Japan, etc – mature and developing democracies alike. Many Prime Ministers have been brought down by votes of no confidence – just read this list. Most of these democracies not only did not collapse, but continue to prosper to this day.
Prime Ministers defeated by votes of no confidence
Australia
* James Scullin (1931)
* Arthur Fadden (1941)
* Malcolm Fraser (1975)
Canada
* Arthur Meighen (1926)
* John George Diefenbaker (1963)
* Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1974)
* Joe Clark (1979)
* Paul Martin (2005)
Denmark
* Knud Kristensen (1947)
France
* Georges Pompidou (1962)
Germany
* Helmut Schmidt (1982)
India
* Vishwanath Pratap Singh (1990)
* H D Deve Gowda (1997)
* Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1999)
Israel
* Yitzhak Shamir (1990)
Italy
* Benito Mussolini (1943)
* Amintore Fanfani (1954)
* Romano Prodi 1st (1998)
* Romano Prodi 2nd (2008)
Japan
* Katsura Taro (1913)
* Shigeru Yoshida 2nd (1948)
* Shigeru Yoshida 4th (1953)
* Masayoshi Ohira (1980)
* Kiichi Miyazawa (1993)
The Netherlands
* Joseph Maria Laurens Theo Cals (1966)
* Rudolphus Franciscus Marie Lubbers (1989)
New Zealand
* Thomas MacKenzie (1912)
Norway
* Christopher Hornsrud (1928)
* Einar Gerhardsen (1963)
* John Lyng (1963)
Papua New Guinea
* Michael Somare (1980)
* Paias Wingti (1988)
Solomon Islands
* Francis Billy Hilly (1994)
* Manasseh Sogavare (2007)
Tuvalu
* Bikenibeu Paeniu (1999)
* Faimalaga Luka (2001)
* Saufatu Sopoanga (2004)
Ukraine
* Viktor Yushchenko (2001)
* Viktor Yanukovych (2004)
United Kingdom
* Lord North (1782)—This is considered to be the first motion of no confidence in history
* John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1866)
* Benjamin Disraeli (1868)
* William Gladstone (1885)
* Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1886)
* William Gladstone (1886)
* Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1892)
* Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1895)
* Stanley Baldwin (January 1924)
* Ramsay MacDonald (October 1924)
* James Callaghan (1979)
4. Whenever the members of your party/coalition change ship, the government is brought down with it. So I’ve got news for you, Malaysia: It happens all the time. This is what Wikipedia says (you only need common sense to agree):
“The cases in which a motion of no confidence have passed are generally those in which the government party has a slim majority which is eliminated by either by-elections or defections. Motions of No Confidence are far more common in multi-party systems in which a minority party must form coalition government. This can result in the situation in which there are many short-lived governments because the party structure allows small parties to break a government without means to create a government.”
5. The political system might be a little more 'stable' if we have a Presidential system of government, eg. in the USA, France, South Korea, Taiwan. Unlike a Westminster style Parliamentary Democracy like ours, the Executive branch of the government in a Presidential system is not exposed to the same risk of change or removal. Once elected, the President is there for 4/5/6 years whether the Parliament/Legislature have confidence in him or not. So, you’ll know for certain who you have to deal with for a fixed period of time. In that respect, there is certainty in the political system. (Yes, you can still try to impeach the President, but it is usually very difficult and therefore very rare.)
6. On the other hand, political deadlocks are perhaps even more common in a Presidential system because it is very common to have one party controlling the Legislature and another party controlling the Presidency, kind of like what is happening now in the USA (President = Republican, Congress = Democrats) and Taiwan during President Chen (President = Democratic Progressive Party, Parliament = Nationalist Party). The Legislature may shoot down the President’s policies, and the President may veto the laws passed by the Legislature. But then the USA has survived countless such deadlocks – and prospered – for more than 200 years. Taiwan - after 2 democratic and peaceful regime changes in the past 10 years - is now proudly among the most stable democracies in Asia.
7. However, it is unlikely that Malaysia will switch to a Presidential system because we love our Monarchy, we would not want to replace it with a President. (Unless we choose to have a President who is still subordinate to the Agong, but then if the Agong has power to remove the President it would defeat the purpose of electing the President in the first place.)
Anti-Hopping Law – Unworkable
8. Can the problem of ‘political instability’ due to party-hopping be solved by an anti-hopping law? The fact that most of the other Westminster style democracies – mature and developed – in the world DO NOT have such prohibition of party-hopping seems to make the answer quite obvious.
9. But then we are Malaysia, and Malaysia is always Boleh, so maybe we should be the first to have it? Well, but how is that going to work in practice? Let's work this out.
10. The starting point we all accept is that our MPs are not mere rubber-stamps. (Softly: I know the BN MPs are, but psshhhh… in theory they are not supposed to be…) They are supposed to exercise independent judgments on whether to vote for or against any proposal presented to the Parliament, so it is always open for them - BN and Opposition alike – to vote for or against the government of the day.
11. So, it is always possible for the MP from the governing BN coalition to vote against the government’s decision to, say, join the USA in invading Iraq. This was what many British MPs from the ruling Labour Party have done, against their then leader Tony Blair. It is their right, as people’s representatives elected by their constituencies.
12. But if we have an anti-hopping law in place, does it mean that the MP from a ruling party could no longer vote against his own governing party? You might say, voting for one or two resolutions is ok, but not too many. But then how many nay-votes is too many? If a BN MP keeps voting against the BN and keeps voting in favour of proposals put up by the Opposition, is he still a member of BN, even though he is not allowed to jump ship and call himself an Opposition MP (because the anti-hopping law does not allow that)?
13. Ok, maybe we can accept him voting with the Opposition MP but he just cannot be allowed to cast a vote of no-confidence against the Prime Minister, leader of his own coalition. But if that is the case, is it still meaningful if, even though the Prime Minister cannot be defeated by no-confidence votes from his own party’s MPs, but his own MPs always vote against him in all other resolutions? How can he still govern if they keep rejecting his policies in Parliament?
14. The other alternative is of course to make it mandatory for the MPs elected under a particular party/coalition to vote according to party line, regardless of his own opinions. Therefore, let’s abolish paragraph 10 above, so the government will always be 'stable'.
15. But in that case, we would no longer have a Parliamentary Democracy – we have a de facto Presidential system which is even more powerful than the real Presidential system because we now have 2 branches cemented into 1: the Executive branch is fully controlling and controlled by the majority of the Legislative branch. Say goodbye to checks and balances and welcome Executive Tyranny – we might as well abolish the Parliament because whoever (both from BN and Opposition) is not appointed a member of the Cabinet (ie. the Executive branch) is basically useless, because they can never vote ‘no’ to any proposal by the Executive branch anyway.
16. The right of an MP to exercise his own judgment (paragraph 10 above) is so crucial and fundamental to any Parliamentary Democracy. If he is not able to vote freely, he would not be able to ‘jaga’ the Executive for the people, to vote against and to vote out the corrupt and incompetent government ministers (which is sadly the situation in the current BN-dominated Parliament). These MPs would have no reason to be elected in the first place.
17. So, to sum up, the anti-hopping law is fundamentally unsustainable because it seeks to deny the most fundamental feature of a Parliamentary Democracy – the freedom of each and every MP to vote to support any resolution, whether it is from the ruling party or the opposition.
Recall, perhaps?
18. But does it mean that the people should be left disappointed when their elected MP turns into a frog? Well, technically yes, and that is why it is so important for the voters to vote for the candidate, not the party. Vote for someone you can trust, whose judgment is sound and who is wise – no matter which party he is with. (Theoretically, don't forget that he should be allowed to jump ship after he was elected as a candidate of his party because his party might turn into a 'bad' party AFTER being elected to govern and half-way into their 5 year term.) That was the original intention of our Parliamentary system, anyway.
19. But I think instead of having anti-hopping law, we should have a ‘recall law’ where the voters in a constituency are allowed to call for a ‘referendum’ on the MP if the MP has done something against the wishes of his constituents who elected him, such as if he has changed party.
20. Voters should be allowed to have another election in their constituency to confirm whether that MP should continue to represent them in the Parliament if, say, 25% of the registered voters in that constituency petition to do so, after the general election but before the 5 year term is up. It would be like a by-election we now have.
21. That way, the MP would be forced to constantly explain his (in)actions in the Parliament to his constituents, making the system much more accountable.
Well, we must Get Used to it
22. So here we are, a Westminster style Constitutional Monarchy and Parliamentary Democracy. The Prime Minister can only be the Prime Minister if he is supported by a majority of MPs. If not, he has to step down immediately – simple as that. And MPs are allowed to change their allegiance all the time. In theory it is less 'stable', but more accountable because whenever the government does something incredibly stupid/unpopular (such as invading Iraq, 'main-main' with ISA arrests or the Prime Minister being struck by mad cow disease), the MPs should be able to bring the government down IMMEDIATELY, so that the government will be constantly accountable to the people.
23. Toppling the ruling party by defection is a fact of life in such a system, DUH!! Indeed, it SHOULD BE VERY COMMON, because it is only through this CONSTANT THREAT of being brought down that the Parliament is able to keep the government CONSTANTLY accountable and don't do anything stupid or crazy. It is the only effective weapon to check Executive tyranny. The only thing is that we have never come to this stage before in our history, so it’s completely new to us, thanks to BN’s perpetual insult on the people’s intelligence for the past 51 years and assuming that we are too stupid to handle Democracy.
24. But then I suspect that given the very slim majority (less than 5 MPs) that Anwar claims to currently have over BN in the Parliament, it is quite likely that Anwar’s “new government” (if he succeeds) could also be easily destabilised in the future by threats of MPs crossing-‘back’ (watch out for PAS).
25. If the current BN could be so easily threatened with crossing-overs even though they are only 8 MPs short of a 2/3 majority (while PR is a whopping 30 MPs short of a simple majority), I wonder how many governments in the future would be ‘stable’ enough.
26. If PR can really survive into the future and a 2-party system really takes root in Malaysia (which is a good thing for our Democracy), Malaysians must brace ourselves for a more ‘unstable’ and ‘fluid’ political system in the future. The only alternative is to back-paddle and retard the growth and maturity of our Democracy, back to the dark old days of a comprehensive domination by a single coalition (or to turn into a Presidential system – paragraph 5, 6, 7 above, which is unlikely).
27. Therefore, let’s get used to this ‘instability’, a hallmark of genuine Democracy. If so many other democracies could do it, so could we. Both sides of the political divide – and the important institutions of the country such as the Monarchy and the armed forces – should do the country a great service by accepting whatever decision is made by our elected MPs. There should be nothing to panic about if there is going to be a change in government. (Only those who are afraid of losing power should panic.) Once we manage to ride through this ‘growing pain’ of regime change (or failure to change) for the first time with calm and composure, we – and foreign investors – would have nothing to fear EVERY SINGLE time we have a general election. If we can live through this sort of 'political turmoils' unscathed, it would bear testimony to the maturity and strength of our democracy.
28. So welcome, Malaysia, to genuine Democracy. Enjoy the ride - and there is no need to 'panic'!
(from now on, I'll write like my idol Che Det - numbering my paragraphs. And it makes me feel quite 'Che Det', to be honest... hehe)
