Is it true what Prime Minister Dr Mahathir said about leaders being given longer periods to run countries to prevent a situation of anarchy in the report (May 6)?

This will depend firstly on the nature of leaders and their styles of governance whether they are "malevolent" despots leaching on the people or "benevolent" paternalistic ones like possibly him or Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew or Chairman Mao who brought considerable economic progress and other benefits to their respective peoples.

Surely, it is doubtful that the same may be extended to the likes of Marcos of Philippines, Suharto of Indonesia, Castro of Cuba, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Idi Amin and Milton Obote of Uganda!

Secondly, it depends on whether there already exist in the socio-cultural matrix of the country relatively autonomous political structures and government institutions such as executives, bureaucracies, courts, political parties, and interest groups, committed to a national public interest, democratic practices and peoples' well being, without which rapid regime transitions mandated by constitutional restrictions can lead, as what PM said, to anarchy or at best non completion or reversals of development programmes.

Before we cite American limitation of their presidential terms as a model, one should not overlook the fact that it took the American people 164 years to evolve autonomous political structures and government institutions committed to a national public interest, that were capable of mitigating the effects of regime transition before they limited their presidency to two terms.

In the final analysis, it is the evolution and existence of these independent political structures and institutions that consolidate democratic rule for the nation  and not the term of the leader whether restricted or unrestricted, irrespective.

The fact is, regime transition, whether slow or rapid, is, as long as the leader is on balance, effective, wise and just in his approach at governance, more a concern of the political elites of the nation than the peoples themselves.

This is because in the aforementioned scenario of benevolent rule, only the political elites are interested in the division, distribution and rotation of political power, and when it would be their turn, which limited terms afford and facilitate.

There is then some force in PM's statement if it were perceived a longer term service by one effective leader can allow better instead of thwarting the evolution of autonomous democratic institutions according to the pace permitted by the socio-cultural matrix of the country such as ours.

If a leader is still popular by majority, why have a constitutional provision to restrict his term?

The only downside is that others equally or more competent leaders are not given a chance and they soon become disillusioned while the supreme leader is soon followed around only by weak and obsequious deputies and political hangers-on who do not contradict or correct him when he makes the wrong decisions.

Maybe for check and balance, we should try to separate political parties from presidency/prime ministership and have separate elections for each of these.