COMMENT | Would Muhyiddin go for snap polls before Budget Day?
COMMENT | Many people are talking about snap polls, with some believing that it will even come before the Budget 2021 is tabled in Parliament.
Some argue that snap polls can end the current political impasse and give Muhyiddin Yassin a stronger majority to lead Malaysia out of the woods amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and the global recession.
Citing PN’s 91 percent landslide win in the Chini by-election, another story places the decision on the readiness of PN for the 15th general election. Once PN’s seat negotiations are done, Muhyiddin may call for the election.
Some will go as far as thinking it would be dictated by Umno and PAS, which hold just more than half of PN’s parliamentary seats.
I do not believe in snap polls before Budget 2021 simply because...
COMMENT | Many people are talking about snap polls, with some believing that it will even come before the Budget 2021 is tabled in Parliament.
Some argue that snap polls can end the current political impasse and give Muhyiddin Yassin a stronger majority to lead Malaysia out of the woods amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and the global recession.
Citing PN’s 91 percent landslide win in the Chini by-election, another story places the decision on the readiness of PN for the 15th general election. Once PN’s seat negotiations are done, Muhyiddin may call for the election.
Some will go as far as thinking it would be dictated by Umno and PAS, which hold just more than half of PN’s parliamentary seats.
I do not believe in snap polls before Budget 2021 simply because, to do so, Muhyiddin would be acting against his best interest.
Do I have any insider information? No, I am a political scientist, what politicians call an "armchair analyst", who operates by applying theories on realities and occasionally gets one or two things correct.
On March 4, I wrote about the newborn PN government, including these four developments:
- Muhyiddin’s cabinet would be bloated and government backbenchers would get fat jobs at GLCs;
- No unity among its three Malay parties, despite all championing Malay-Muslims’ interests;
- Expectations rise for Umno and Bersatu to regroup; and
- PAS would soften its communal stance after becoming government, like DAP did.
Here is this armchair analyst’s explanation of why you should not expect snap polls before November.
Who decides on snap polls?
Articles 55(1) and 40(2)(b) of the Federal Constitution leave no ambiguity that only two persons can decide for snap polls to take place.
The first person is the prime minister. If he does not request for an early dissolution, the Dewan Rakyat will only stand dissolved five years from the date of its first meeting. If he does not ask, not even the yang di-Pertuan Agong can make it happen.
The second person is the Agong. The King holds absolute discretion on whether to consent to the prime minister’s request for dissolution.
How can the PM be forced towards snap polls?
Article 55(1) places no restriction on the timing and circumstances for the prime minister to request for a dissolution of the House, but Article 43(4) leaves such a request as one of his only two options “...if the prime minister ceases to command the confidence of the majority of the members of the House of Representatives”.
His other option is resignation, so another MP who commands the confidence of the House can succeed him as PM.
How may Muhyiddin lose Parliament’s confidence?
Conventionally, there are three ways how a prime minister may lose the confidence of Parliament. First, by losing a vote of no-confidence tabled by the opposition; second, by losing a vote of confidence tabled by him or his government; third, by losing a vote on the budget.
After the Perak constitutional crisis, the Federal Court affirmed that it can also be expressed through the presentation of statutory declarations by lawmakers to the monarch.
It is important to underline that losing a majority in the House does not constitute losing its confidence, as many Malaysians mistake it to be.
With a new Parliament speaker who will not fast track any motion of no-confidence or confidence before governmental business, Muhyiddin is safe in the House until Budget Day (Nov 6).
Even if some PN parliamentarians are not happy with Muhyiddin – perhaps with the High Court’s verdict on Najib’s case – they cannot bring down the government by just skipping Parliament and causing a narrow defeat of government’s bills or motions.
The difficult question
In any case, embarrassing as it may be for the government, a legislative defeat now no longer compels its resignation. In the UK, the last time a legislative defeat was made to equate a loss of confidence was during World War II.
After the Dewan Rakyat’s adjournment on Aug 27, Muhyiddin will be safe even if a significant number of PN parliamentarians officially pull out. That would merely reduce Muhyiddin government to a minority government, not tantamount to a loss of confidence.
A loss of confidence when Parliament is not in session can only happen if enough opposition MPs back Muhyiddin’s rebels in PN and submit to the King statutory declarations of no-confidence in the PM. This will not happen until Pakatan Harapan is confident to face and want snap polls.
Hence, even with just 113 seats, Muhyiddin can be safe throughout the year, except during the budget process, not just for 2020 but even for 2021 and 2022.
If Muhyiddin survives every budget, he can serve until July 16, 2023, when Parliament stands dissolved.
Why should Muhyiddin cut short his own term?
Unless he loses the budget in November, why should Muhyiddin voluntarily seek an early election to shorten his term? The talk of Muhyiddin having a stronger hand after GE15 only makes sense if his party can have more seats than now.
Otherwise, Umno will not concede the top job, not for long at least, to a minor party like what PKR and DAP did for Bersatu during their 22 months or what DAP and Amanah want PKR to do now for Warisan.
And the standard rule for seat allocation in Malaysian coalitions is that incumbents get to keep their seats while seats held by opponents may be negotiable for an exchange or change of contestants.
For PN, the difficult question is simply this: should defectors be treated as incumbents and be allowed to keep their seats?
If yes, Bersatu can look forward to keeping at least 37 seats, namely 12 won under its name (including the six now in Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s bloc), 15 from Umno and 10 from PKR (see table below). This would give Muhyiddin a strong hand but why should Umno be kind to its 15 turncoats?
If no, then Bersatu will start with 12 seats it won in GE14, and possibly also the 10 taken from PKR for a total of 22. However, since Bersatu won less than 50 percent of the votes in three constituencies currently held by Mahathir’s bloc - Kubang Pasu (49.70 percent), Jerlun (42.55 percent) and Sri Gading (48.58 percent) - PAS and Umno may even ask for one or two of them.
DAP strategist Liew Chin Tong predicted that Bersatu would be given 35 to 40 seats. But what matters is not how many seats a party can contest but how many it can win.
There are indeed 51 more “broadly-defined Malay-Muslim constituencies” (see table above) in the peninsula and Sabah to be divided among the three Malay parties. But many are Harapan or Warisan strongholds that Bersatu, with its weak machinery, cannot expect to take even when the opposition is in disarray.
With around 22 seats, Muhyiddin will be a weaker PM than now. Bersatu certainly cannot hope to control one-third of the cabinet posts. Muhyiddin will have to retire – probably within months – once Umno tells him his time is up.
Muhyiddin’s other option is to rejoin Umno and be its president, as per the suggestions made by Nazri Abdul Aziz and Tajuddin Abdul Rahman.
But who can guarantee Muhyiddin his captainship after abandoning his own ship? After Mahathir’s promise to Anwar Ibrahim, it would be foolish for any Malaysian politician to blindly trust their allies.
Can Muhyiddin survive till the Budget?
By calling for a snap election, Muhyiddin can surely break Mahathir’s record for the shortest prime minister's tenure.
Readers may ask, even if Muhyiddin is safe now till Budget Day, can’t Umno bring him down during the budget vote and still have snap polls?
No, Umno can’t if Muhyiddin prepares himself for the storm with a life jacket - a confidence and supply pact with the opposition, like what the British Tories have with the Northern Ireland’s Unionists.
WONG CHIN HUAT is an Essex-trained political scientist working on political institutions and group conflicts. He currently leads the clusters on the electoral system and constituency delimitation in the government’s Electoral Reform Committee (ERC). Mindful of humans’ self-interest motivation while pursuing a better world, he is a principled opportunist.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
