The issue of whether a Malaysian prime minister can be a non-Malay non-Muslim appears to be emotionally charged judging from your reports on the same and the recent column by Lee Ban Chen.

The Westminster convention which is now part of the written Malaysian federal constitution, merely charge the person who has the confidence of the majority of the house (Dewan Rakyat) to be prime minister.

The issue of the person's ethnicity, religion, beliefs, gender or sexual orientation is not provided for.

It makes it interesting if we will now want to imply or read into the constitution that the PM must be Malay, male, Muslim, heterosexual, an Umno man etc. because of convention. Constitutional Law 101 say that convention is not law.

Even law can be disputed, what more a convention. And don't say that a comment like this is against national security or trying to cause rife through 'unconstitutional means'. We are familiar with these pretensions under the ISA.

Bear in mind, that we still have the equality and non-discrimination clause in Article 8 for good measure.

The fact that Pak Lah says we have Islam Hadhari does not make a difference. The convention is Westminster.