The recent spat between Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq and Penang Deputy Chief Minister P. Ramasamy over the call for National Unity and Social Well-Being Minister P. Waythamoorthy’s resignation is unfortunate and does not reflect well on ministerial unity in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government.
I do not wish to be drawn into the merits of their respective arguments but feel compelled to point out that a Minister publicly calling for the resignation of a fellow Minister is certainly wrong as this goes against well established conventions of collective ministerial responsibility.
Collective ministerial responsibility is defined as follows:
“Cabinet collective responsibility, also known as collective ministerial responsibility, is a constitutional convention in Parliamentary systems that members of the Cabinet must publicly support all governmental decisions made in cabinet, even if they do not privately agree with them.”
One may agree or not with the decisions made by Waythamoorthy in his handling of the Seafield temple issue.
He would certainly be subject to criticism from the public but to be publicly told by a fellow minister to resign is quite another thing and against such well established conventions that a government is collectively responsible for its decisions.
If at all Waythamoorthy is to be reprimanded, such reprimand ought to come from the Prime Minister and not his fellow Ministers.
Moreover, such public outbursts between fellow ministers certainly do not inspire public confidence in government unity.
The point from all of this is Syed Saddiq’s public demand for Waythamoorthy’s resignation is highly irresponsible in the sense that it is clearly against collective ministerial responsibility and has nothing to do with his claim that he is being silenced from voicing his views on the matter.
I personally feel that to suggest that Wayhtamoorthy ought to be solely blamed for the Seafield issue and, therefore, ought to resign is, as correctly pointed out by some netizens, akin to demanding Syed Saddiq’s resignation for Malaysia’s loss to Vietnam in the recently concluded AFF Championships.
Surely, this is going abit too far.
The death of fireman Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim is most unfortunate and was a result of criminal acts committed by certain individuals who must be brought to justice.
It should not be politicised and must be handled delicately.
Public outbursts of the way in which such a tragedy was handled can lead to further unrest over the matter which should be avoided at all costs.
It is hoped such public outbursts by ministers calling for the resignations of their colleagues stops as it can be detrimental to the healthy development and growth of the new PH administration.