COMMENT | Malaysia would be making history when the prime minister’s term is limited, as we would be the first standard parliamentary democracy to do so.

If it works out well, we may be emulated as presidential and semi-presidential democracies emulate the United States in presidential term limits, making it a norm.

So far, to our knowledge, South Africa is the only parliamentary democracy with a term limit for its head of state.

However, South Africa is a variant of parliamentarianism as its head of government, elected and sackable by Parliament, is called the president, who also assumes the head of state functions and has no monarch as a figurehead above him with some residual powers.

The rarity of term limits...