Has our country become a mature democracy...like in USA?

Honestly, I could not wait for NH Chan’s rebuttal of Roger Tan’s ‘No room for double standards’ in the New Sunday Times, which criticizes his recent criticisms of the Federal Court and other lower court decisions in connection with the Perak power grab.

As a layman, going by Roger’s logic of ‘no room for double standards’ Pakatan has to behave like saints and accept whatever unfair means Barisan Nasional throw at them. I wish to refer to his examples in the article with my two-cent’s worth in brackets:

“If you say you are for a strict separation of powers, then Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo should not even have sued Pandikar Amin albeit the applicable laws and facts are poles apart from the Perak fiasco.”
(yes, the applicable laws and facts are poles apart, but to the laymen, a decision by a committee of the state legislature is not good enough whereas the Speaker in Parliament alone can decide on suspension of a member.)

“If prior to Sept 16 when Pakatan and their legal experts held the view that the king could dismiss the prime minister without a vote of no confidence in the Dewan Rakyat if the king was satisfied through other means that the prime minister had lost the confidence of the majority in the Dewan Rakyat, then these same people should not be so critical of the very same means employed by the Sultan of Perak when he decided to appoint Zambry as menteri besar.”
(The big difference here is prior to Sept 16, it was all talk and I would give credit to Anwar and those who might have thoughts of crossing-over, for being responsible enough for not creating serious national security problems if they have done so. If the Perak situation could cause such upheavals in terms of administration and security, what more on a national scale?)

“If Pakatan strongly believes in freedom of association, then they should not be using pre-signed letters of resignation to stop their elected representatives from disassociating and crossing over to other parties.”
(Under the current laws, the pre-signed letters might not be legally effective but are meant to be a means of controlling party representatives who are supposed to honour what they have signed willingly before they were elected. Furthermore, we must not forget that two out of the three state assemblymen were charged with corruption and their cases seemed to be held over conveniently which led to speculation about deals to let them off if they listened to BN!)

“Having lost the party-hopping game which they first started, they should learn to accept their defeat gracefully and wait till the next general election or for some other representatives to hop over to their side just like in America, where criss-crossing by the Republicans and Democrats is accepted without any question if one truly believes in freedom of association.”
(I wish our country had reached maturity in democracy to be on par with that of America! Either Roger is being naïve politically or just an idealist. Many people believe BN will not handover power easily even if they had lost in a general election, though again, it is merely conjecture and we will have to wait and see. Only after BN is dislodged from their seats of power, held for more than half a century, can a two-party system be possible. I am sure if we were a mature democracy like in America, the MPs in Sabah and Sarawak would have crossed over without having to fear for the consequences of their intended actions.)

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