 "Mahathir Mohamad")
You know a parliamentary democracy is in deep trouble when a king has to tell lawmakers to pass a budget. That Malaysia's monarch, usually a background ceremonial figure, has become so involved in basic government shows the breakdown in the political economy. But it goes wider than that. This is a country losing all sense of leadership.
Like waxwork figures, the dominant players in Kuala Lumpur are the same folks at or near the top of their game when I lived there in the 1990s. Few Malaysians could name a member of the royal families; the position of king is rotated
