Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohd Nazri Aziz is trying to promote himself from class monitor to emperor.

Pak Lah's loose, accommodative and reconciliatory style of leadership is again about to be abused by one of his ministers. I was surprised why in the first place Nazri's portfolio (Parliamentary Affairs) was ever created.

Is it in response to a genuine, hard pressing national need or just for the purpose of accommodating personalities in order to buy their support and influence? It is no surprise that Pak Lah ended up with the biggest cabinet that the country has ever had.

In our attempt to understand what his portfolio is all about, we observe that he has been acting like a high school class monitor. This role certainly does not justify a ministerial status in a country that has been practicing parliamentary democracy for the past 48 years.

Now he is proposing that a department that would play the role of a caretaker, event and probably stage manager of Parliament be set up. In an unfettered, empire building spree, even this goes too far in insulting and undermining the status of Parliament.

The fact that such proposal has been allowed to be tabled at all by the cabinet is a testimony as to how loose and accommodative the present government has been. Anyway, let us see whether a class monitor would be allowed to be an emperor by our Parliament.