COMMENT After a three-and-a-half-week hiatus, the Selangor state executive council was sworn in yesterday. And the man who would have heaved the biggest sigh of relief is Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim.

He had to endure a complexity-strewn course in which his weaknesses and strengths, and those of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition of which he is the nominal state head, were on parade.

It is a measure of the delicacy of the whole saga of selection and appointment of the state cabinet that the Selangor palace saw fit to put out a statement yesterday that sought to deflect from it blame for the delay in inaugurating the exco.

NONE The statement alluded to the MB's prior arranged appointment with a medical specialist abroad during the time when consultations between Khalid and the sultan were supposed to be at a height, a factor that the palace's explanation hinted had contributed to the delay.

Constitutional pundits were left scratching their heads as to how matters with respect to the selection and swearing-in of the exco could be as protracted as the Selangor saga turned out to be.

For the substance of the constitutional amendments that were passed in 1983 had actually removed whatever discretionary power the sultans had hitherto enjoyed in matters to do with the selection of the MB and the appointment of the state cabinet.

After those amendments were passed, state rulers were bound to accept the advice of the MB, loath as they sometimes are to do so.

The amendments had divested the rulers of their discretionary power, making the advice of the executive well-nigh irresistible.

But things these days are a long way removed from the 1980s when Umno was monarch of all it surveyed in the political realm.

There is the opposition Pakatan Rakyat, now in close contention with Umno-BN for the keys to Putrajaya, a reality that has led the latter to tell Malayan royals that Pakatan are out to do them in despite the latter's repeated disavowals of any such intent.

After the constitutional crisis in Perak in early 2009 when Umno-BN enjoyed royal favour in deposing the Pakatan government of Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin, the rulers began to claw back the powers and influence they had enjoyed prior to their 1983 decimation.

The exco saga in Selangor the past four weeks was played out against this backdrop of royals seeking to push back at the Umno-engineered limits placed on them by the 1983 amendments.

Khalid undermined from within

In this endeavour, the shrewder players of the game are not only inclined to leverage on Umno's support for them, they are also not averse to exploiting weaknesses within the Pakatan coalition and in its individual components.

Thus Pakatan MB-designate Khalid Ibrahim, days before he took the oath of office as MB on May 14, was subjected to the embarrassment of having a letter read out in his presence that was written by the Selangor PKR secretary to the sultan which not-so-subtly undermined Khalid's claims to a second term of office.

Senior state civil servants, known to be proxies of Umno, were present while the letter was read out at a royal audience, causing Khalid no small chagrin.

But this didn't baulk Khalid in his quest for a second term as MB, a matter that was made pro forma after the palace received a letter from PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail that he was the PKR choice for MB, a selection its Pakatan allies, DAP and PAS, endorsed in separate letters to that effect.

However, this show of coalition solidarity did not go far enough. Both PAS and DAP, each with an equal number of seats (15) in the state assembly, sent the list of their nominees for state exco membership directly to the palace, and not as should have been the case, through the Pakatan MB-designate.

NONE This move left them vulnerable to the game of preference, with the Selangor PAS state chief Abdul Rani Osman ( right ), more acutely exposed from having publicly avowed that he would abide by the sultan's preferences based on the party's list of seven nominees.

The speculation about Rani's motives was that having been the object of a royal rebuff the last time round when his party proposed him to take the place of the expelled Hasan Ali in the state exco early last year, he was playing for long-term stakes by ingratiating himself with the palace.

PAS may well increase their number of seats in the Selangor state assembly at the next general election which will be contested on a new decanal re-delineation of state and parliamentary constituencies. Shrewd Rani appeared to be playing for long-term keeps.

Xavier Jeyakumar dropped

Meanwhile, putting aside his pique at having elements in his own party deal him a low blow at a royal audience, Khalid kept his cool and continued the palaver with the sultan on the overall composition of the state cabinet, pirouetting within the narrow confines imposed by the sultan's insistence on the ratio of Malays to non-Malays (variously reported to be seven Malays to three non-Malays and, latter, six to four) and the advice of his own party that, pace the 1983 amendments, the constitution allowed the MB upper hand in the matter.

Despite two demonstrations by PKR adviser Anwar Ibrahim on how he, when he was deputy prime minister, had convinced rulers to abide by the advice of the executive in precisely such matters as the composition of the state exco, Khalid, either because of a lack of skill or a paucity of nerve, was unable to shift the sultan.

NONE Further, his attempt to have Dr Xavier Jeyakumar ( right ) retained in the PKR trio of exco members for the 2013-2018 term was shot down by the sultan who apparently revealed that he was deluged with letters and petitions from PKR types about the dentist's shortcomings.

Khalid demurred that the claims against Jeyakumar were unproven allegations and, therefore, should not be held against the man. Khalid's pleas turned out to be unavailing.

Now party supremo Anwar is preparing to lead a PKR delegation for a requested audience with the sultan, presumably to discuss palace-to-party relations.

Perhaps what would be more useful to PKR would be an internal party seminar on the true import of the 1983 constitutional amendments and on how party functionaries could avoid undermining each other.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.