Balance of power and accountability

IT was riveting to watch on TV in the last few days about the US Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on President Trump’s nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court and the testimonies from a lady professor about his alleged sexual assault 35 years ago and his rebuttal against the allegation.

For me as a Malaysian, the US confirmation process shows what our parliament can also do when it establishes the select parliamentary committees as promised in the Pakatan Harapan GE14 Election Manifesto to provide checks and balances on the functions of the government.

These functions should include scrutinising the candidates proposed to head the key public institutions as part of parliament’s duty in ensuring good governance.

The testimonies to the Senate committee on Capitol Hill brought out the power of public opinion. To everybody’s great surprise, despite all the bitter partisan politics, the Republicans and Democrats reached a decision to postpone their voting to allow further investigation into the allegation of sexual misconduct on the part of President Trump’s nominee to the highly coveted post in the Supreme Court.

The president has been taught the lesson that his own Republican senators were concerned about public opinion. That is the strength of American democracy - that the president cannot take Congress for granted. We should have the same balance of power in Malaysia between the Cabinet, Parliament and the public. The rationale behind confirmation hearings which we in Malaysia should introduce in the parliamentary select committees is that while the Cabinet and the Prime Minister have the right to appoint whomever they feel can be trusted to hold a high public office, this right is not absolute.

Members of parliament as representatives of the people need to be convinced that the government nominees are men and women of good character and integrity so that they will not fall prey to those who know of some secret in their past life which can be exploited to blackmail them into making biased or corrupt decisions when they are in office.

It is encouraging to hear that the new speaker of parliament is receptive to the establishment of parliamentary select committees and I hope he will also make confirmation hearings one of the responsibilities to serve as a counter check on the appointments made by the political government.

The current government should be congratulated for choosing credible individuals to head key institutions but it can reinforce its brand of New Malaysia by ensuring that all future public appointments, which are directly relevant to public interest on a clean government, will be subject to confirmation by the select committees.

The civil service, military and the police should also have such systems of check and balance when promoting an officer to the top.

Each of these services has its own service commission. The respective service commissions should order a background check on the nominee and based on the reports of the investigation, the commissions should hold confirmation hearings at which witnesses can come forward to testify for or against him.

These witnesses may have information about his character and reputation which could well be the deciding factor in disqualifying him for the job.

Democracy is hard and sometimes dirty but if practised with openness and accountability, it is the best form of government to serve the people.