LETTER | It’s a new Malaysia! Many people have thought about and proposed many (legal) reforms these couple of weeks back and I think it is great.

Now I feel like we can make cereal boxes with Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s face on it to sell to raise funds for a start-up.

Now I feel like we can call Gobind Singh Deo or Dr Wan Azizah “barmy old codgers” if we like and still go about becoming the world’s best engineers, artists, scientists, Cat Cafe’s start-up owners etc.

Now I feel like we are free to think and imagine and act without apathy, whether about government policies or growing a new kidney in the lab for people who need it.

But to make sure these new freedoms (if they do happen) cannot be taken away easily, we need to reform how laws can be changed.

By the next election, if BN wins and they want to re-enact the Internal Security Act (ISA), all they have to have (I think) is a simple majority in Parliament.

All the reforms enacted by Pakatan Harapan 2018-2023 can be reversed or abolished like what Harapan is going to do to previous BN era laws.

We can start doing this by thinking about how the highest law (the Federal Constitution) can be amended.

For Federal Constitution amendments to pass, I suggest two-third majorities in both Houses of Parliament and a referendum with at least a 70 percent turnout and a 70 percent in favour of change (to avoid our own “Brexit”).

Same goes for amending state constitutions. Of course, we might have to correct the previous BN-era amendments that are detrimental to parliamentary democracy first before capping it with a “keystone reform” on constitutional amendment procedures.

Also, all these are very mentally draining problems requiring patience, intelligence, hard work, tact etc. And because of that, we should compensate the people (politicians) doing them well.

It is ridiculous to expect high-quality personnel to do high-quality work when they are paid peanuts, and also to expect them not to succumb to the allures of corruption just “for a noble cause”.

Politicians are only mortals too. They want to buy the latest Lego or the cutest Care Bears to hug at night too.

For comparison, the prime minister of Singapore is paid RM585,000 per month (Mahathir - RM 20,000). When they are paid that much, then our various demands on them are more reasonable.

Otherwise, we, the voters, of this astonishing country of ours, are not managing our (valued) employees very well.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.