Leader

NST Leader: Returning the mandate

The loud whining catalysed by Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob's call to dissolve Parliament has been heard and digested.

Everyone has just about to come to terms with his stormily disputed timing when another dimension popped up: an opposition politician is about to file a suit, an unchartered action, to challenge the dissolution on constitutional grounds.

The purported suit essentially avers that Ismail Sabri did not "command the general authority" of his old Cabinet when he announced the dissolution. This after 12 Perikatan Nasional Cabinet colleagues sandbagged him by appealing to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to stop the dissolution, which, from Ismail Sabri's perspective, was a no-confidence vote that fired up his call.

To be fair, the now caretaker prime minister or, rather his old job description, was cornered: he knew immediate dissolution equalled popular resistance, even from the king, but as a party loyalist, he could not defy the leadership's insistence.

At that point, Ismail Sabri was in a classic Catch-22, but it nonetheless provoked the king to comprehend that deferring consent would trigger another sickening administration collapse that a battered nation will contemptuously rebuke.

Still, that preemptive party tactic managed to secure the coveted royal consent, but what unexpectedly followed was the monarch's startling but tricky-to-interpret "disappointment" with the stunt.

Early and brisk November dates impend for nomination, campaigning and balloting on, literally, muddy-water traversing techniques that require voter heroism.

Notwithstanding the risks, the hustings will be nail-biting and hard fought. And just like 2018, the results may again be revolutionary, cathartic and reforming.

The 2018 voters' resolve to cast individual ballots transcended personal responsibility and logistical gymnastics.

In London, unforeseen machinations cut short leg time to deliver home ballots, but it inspired inventiveness: voters thronged Heathrow's airline booths lined with passengers on direct flights to Kuala Lumpur. The voters practically approached strangers with urgent requests: carry their sealed ballot papers to deliver them to the respective mail voting centres — and beat the deadline.

It's hard to know if this over-the-top, civic-minded labour of love/activism would be futile or worth the aggravation, but the result was monumental: a long-reigning administration was taken down.

While the floods ahead are not to be trivialised, safe balloting to forestall its menace needs innovative ideas. At the same time, the Election Commission can re-imagine means to cast ballots — extending balloting time is natural.

Admittedly, ballot purity is uncertain in this alternative electoral universe, but floods should not dampen voter persistence for as long as the EC thinks laterally. And just because self-centred politicians' mulish coercion of a dreadful situation exposed their shadowy agenda, it doesn't necessarily result in a Cinderella ending.

As it stands, the super-committed electorate commanding the popular vote is engineering a record turnout, a people's revolt adept to newfangled instruments that arouses democracy without hazardous pay.

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