There are not many moments in politics when those in power are asked to voluntarily give some of that power away. Malaysia may soon have one.

On September 3, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said confirmed that the Bill limiting the prime minister's tenure to an aggregate maximum of 10 years is ready to return to the Dewan Rakyat for its second reading. The next parliamentary sitting begins on October 5, although the final decision on when to bring it forward rests with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim as Leader of the House.

This should not be controversial. No prime minister, whether from Pakatan Harapan, Perikatan Nasional, Barisan Nasional or whatever coalition comes after them, should be able to occupy Malaysia's most powerful political office indefinitely. 

Yet when Parliament was given the opportunity to put that principle into the Federal Constitution in March, it failed by two votes.

The Two Votes That Mattered

On March 2, 146 MPs supported the constitutional amendment, while 44 abstained and 32 were absent. It needed 148 votes. Two more MPs standing up and voting yes would have changed the Federal Constitution.

All 40 DAP MPs were present and voted for the amendment. DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke later said MPs who were absent or refused to support it should have to explain themselves to voters who wanted institutional reform.

This was not a confidence vote. It was not about keeping Anwar in Putrajaya. In fact, it sought to do precisely the opposite of entrenching his position. It sought to put a constitutional ceiling on the amount of time he and every person who comes after him could remain prime minister.

The proposal would amend Article 43 so that nobody could serve as prime minister for more than 10 years in aggregate, whether those years were consecutive or separated across different periods in office.

Reform Means Giving Up Power

Political reform is easy to support when it constrains somebody else. The harder test comes when reform restricts the people currently holding office.

Malaysia has spent decades arguing about excessive concentration of power: the strength of the executive, the independence of institutions and the danger of allowing too much authority to accumulate around one political leader. 

A prime ministerial term limit does not solve all those problems, but it establishes something important in the Constitution: power has an expiry date.

Ten years is enough. It is enough time for a prime minister to implement an agenda, fight elections, build institutions and leave a legacy. After that, someone else should lead.

Governments change, coalitions collapse and today's opposition may become tomorrow's government. Constitutional reform is valuable precisely because it survives all of them. That is why the opposition should think carefully before turning this into another partisan contest.

The Opposition Has A Choice

The opposition MPs sought further consultation and argued that such an important constitutional amendment deserved greater scrutiny. That principle is defensible. Constitutional amendments should not be rushed merely because the government of the day wants them passed.

But six months have now passed, and the Bill is coming back. Eventually, every MP has to answer a simple question: Do you believe a Malaysian prime minister should be limited to 10 years or not?

There cannot be endless procedural reasons to avoid answering it. If there are genuine weaknesses in the legislation, improve them. If safeguards are needed, propose them. If consultation is necessary, undertake it. 

Otherwise, "we support reform, but..." risks becoming the easiest sentence in Malaysian politics. At some point, principle has to become a vote.

Anwar's Test

The government cannot simply blame the opposition either. Azalina says the legislation is ready, but whether it reaches the floor during the coming sitting is ultimately a decision for Anwar as Leader of the House. That places responsibility squarely on the government as well.

If institutional reform is genuinely a defining project of the Madani administration, then this Bill deserves political capital. The government should talk to the opposition, negotiate, make whatever reasonable parliamentary preparations are necessary and then put it to a vote.

There will always be political calculations, another controversy competing for attention and someone advising the government that the timing is inconvenient. Reforms that depend on convenient timing rarely happen.

This is therefore as much a test of Anwar's conviction as it is a test of the opposition's. The first attempt failed.

A Reform Worth Passing

For Pakatan Harapan, passing the Bill would demonstrate that reformasi is capable of producing permanent institutional change, not merely campaign language. For the opposition, supporting it would prove that its commitment to checking executive power does not disappear simply because Anwar happens to be the executive being constrained.

For Anwar himself, it would leave behind something considerably more meaningful than another political promise. He would have helped write into Malaysia's Constitution a limit on his own office.

Azalina says the Bill is ready. Hopefully, this time Parliament is ready too.

Those missing two votes should not be difficult to find, not if Malaysia's politicians truly believe what they have spent years telling Malaysians: that no individual should become bigger than the institutions they were elected to serve.