Shades of a despot? Muhyiddin’s halt of Malaysia’s democracy has familiar feel

Name: State of emergency in Malaysia as country fights third wave of Covid-19 with fresh lockdown
Uploaded: 2021-01-17T01:00:27.000Z
Duration: 2 min 51 s
Description: State of emergency in Malaysia as country fights third wave of Covid-19 with fresh lockdown

Although PM says emergency decree is not a coup, even Mahathir Mohamad sees a ‘kind of dictatorship where people cannot protest’

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim says he will petition king to rescind order, but analysts predict a wasted effort

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Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin speaks during a special address after Malaysia’s king announced the imposition of a state of emergency across the country to limit the spread of Covid-19. Photo: DPA

Bhavan Jaipragas

Published: 9:00am, 17 Jan 2021Updated: 9:19pm, 17 Jan 2021

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s decision this week to suspend democracy for the first time in over half a century may have forced a timeout of the furious, months-long efforts by his rivals to topple him by hook or by crook – but by no means has it quelled the disquiet surrounding his leadership.

A case in point was a scathing radio interview on Friday by his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad.

The 95-year-old, ousted as prime minister in a political coup last February, lamented that Muhyiddin’s declaration of a nationwide emergency on Tuesday had plunged Malaysia into a “kind of dictatorship where people cannot protest or question”.

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State of emergency in Malaysia as country fights third wave of Covid-19 with fresh lockdown

Undeterred by the interviewer pointing out that he had his own track record of ruling as a strongman during his first stint as premier from 1981 to 2003, the elder statesman said of Muhyiddin: “A dictator rules by decree. Whether it is right or wrong, we wouldn’t know, we are no longer democratic, so we are sacrificing democracy in order to give him full power to do what he likes.”

Muhyiddin had insisted in a live address announcing the emergency that the measure – which could potentially last until August 1 – was not a military coup and was in fact required to fight the massive third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic the country is engulfed in.

Under Malaysia’s constitution, a state of emergency can be declared by the king – on the advice of the prime minister – if the monarch is satisfied there is an imminent danger to the “security, economic life or public order” of the nation. Tuesday’s decree was approved by the current king, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah.

Like Mahathir, much of the opposition camp have retorted that the ruling Perikatan Nasional government had ample reserve legal powers to deal with the crisis without having to take the drastic measure of declaring a nationwide emergency.