I refer to Malaysiakini ’s Vox Populi topic 'Your Highness, we beg to differ' .

I am disappointed by the ignorance of our system of government in comments such as ‘His Majesty is seriously out of touch with reality, or he's running errands for Umno...or both’. ‘In any case, I know who I've lost any shred of respect for’ and ‘Tuanku, why didn't you say anything when Utusan Malaysia made all those false reports?’

Only in one did I see some knowledge of what a constitutional monarch could and has to say in an official speech to the state, when the writer wrote ‘Tuanku's speech is prepared by the government. It may not reflect his own position’.

Precisely!

Whatever official speech the Agong or a State sultan reads out, it would be one prepared by the relevant government of the day. This is the process common to all democratic nations with a constitutional monarchy.

In a democracy, the government of the day, no matter how unpalatable its popularity, policies and programmes may be, is by law and democratic concept the people’s representative, voted in by a majority in accordance with the established election criteria.

As the people’s representative, the government issues official policies and statements on the people’s behalf (theoretically anyway), and the monarch in his role as the constitutional head of state has no choice but to present these to the State.

Such official statements and policies are supposed to reflect the people’s will which is supreme in a democracy.

Those mindless Myrmidons whom I suspect had been synthetically raised in labs to be feral attack cyber-troopers, knowing only the attack, attack, attack mode only whenever they hear or read something which doesn’t favour their leaders or side, should redirect their verbal assault on to the correct target, namely the federal government, instead of a constitutional head of state.

But far more disconcerting than their ignorance have been their chiding of and egging on the Agong to, implicit in their missives, ‘intervene’ and condemn Utusan for its series of outrageous articles.

Abysmally, it seems some Pakatan Rakyat people haven’t learned anything at all about the follies of supporting royal activism in politics. They appeared to have forgotten the sad sorry saga which transpired in Perak leading to the questionable ouster of the state’s former menteri besar Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin.

Nizar was ‘dismissed’ by the sultan of Perak in what retired Judge NH Chan had described as a show of ‘pretend power’ and the subsequent though not unexpected ruling by the Federal Court that the sultan had enough information on the status of the majority in the state sssembly to make his royal decision as to who the MB should be.

And of course by extension of this ruling, the court had supported the sultan in ignoring the advice of the MB of that day for His Royal Highness to dissolve the state assembly. The glaring inconsistency of the court, and the correctness of Justice NH Chan’s assessment of royal intervention in the Perak case, was amply demonstrated when the very same court subsequently made a ruling in another case, this time correctly on the constitutional process, by asserting that the Agong had no choice but to heed the advice of then-prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

In my previous letter I mentioned that many Pakatan supporters had supported royal activism in politics prior to March 8, 2008 and it was a bitter but nonetheless appropriate padan muka (serves them right) for them when the Perak debacle exploded in their shocked faces.

As Martin Luther King Jr said: ‘Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.’

Ironically it is in the above report that we find vociferous protests against the Agong because another expression using the term Vox Populi is Vox populi vox Dei which means ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’ implying that the king (or in a constitutional monarchy the government) ought to pay attention to the voice of the people.

So should the Agong do so when in the first place the constitutional process doesn’t allow him to, more so to entertain such dangerous ignorance?

Perhaps we should heed the words of Alciun, an advisor at Charlemagne’s court who said: ‘ Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit ’ which translates as ‘And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.’