The world meteorological organization italy's health ministry has issued red alerts for extreme heat in several regions and staying in italy. Today's monocle minute looks at what has changed in three years since the genoa bridge collapse you can find the report by going to monaco. Dot com for slash. Minutes those are today's headlines bacteria. Tom thanks very much. Kaleta now. malayasia's rookie. Politics have descended into a full blown crisis. With prime minister muhyiddin yassin attempting to fend off not only the opposition but his own supposed allies. The united malays national organisation the strongest ally of the ruling national alliance formerly withdrew. Its support earlier. This month and demanded the prime minister's immediate resignation joining us now from kuala lumpur. Is bridget welsh. Bridget is an honorary research fellow. At the university of nottingham's asia research institute malaysia bridge. Thanks very much for being with us. Just explain to us the backdrop to this the pm. I believe continues to claim that he has a majority in parliament. Opposition leaders of course have called for him to step down. Why exactly have we come to this. Well the bottom line is is that the current prime minister who came into power with reconfigured coalition in february of last year Wants to stay in office and doesn't want to give up power even though clearly. The numbers of people have come out. That said. we're no longer supporting him. That the letters have been sent to the king. The king has asked him to reconsider and to follow the constitution The current prime minister in malaysia is still holding onto power and has put off a parliamentary sessions in order to actually hold a vote. Keep in mind that that most of the day year so far malaysia has been under an emergency and at the request of the king. They opened up parliament which they shut down after three days didn't hold a vote of confidence and subsequently now fifteen members of his government have basically come out and said we don't support him and the prime minister is still trying to buy time despite repeated rebukes and reprimands and rick and statements made by the king to say. Hey you don't seem to have the numbers and so you should take steps. Accordingly in malaysia unlike the uk doesn't have a provision for a minority government. So this has been a challenge for malaysia. Core the different actors to come together and two former government and the current government is not letting go absolutely and we'll come to the king in a moment. A niece calls to You know Possibly stepped down from fr- from from the monarch but just on this point about what you mentioned their budget which is the fact that pollens being closed most of the anyway. There's been these emergency powers in effect. I wonder given that background whether fresh calls or even fresh calls from new voices for the pm to resign. We'll pull any weight whatsoever. Well i probably not in fact that You know what we see. Our three things going on in malaysia. We have this political crisis. Wear the prime minister is is clearly minority government. He keeps claiming that he's a majority. But the fact is is that the letter show otherwise in that regard but we also have a very serious cova crisis here with record numbers of cases daily and in an economy that is really suffering with. It's the longest locked down in the world in terms of over five hundred days. And i think as a consequence. These things are coming together. In a confluence of forces and calls have been ripped have been ongoing for months and the fact that they have to reach the highest level of the king and continued to be to be articulated. Shows how much that the current government is just within living within. Its own denial world that it is a sense of lack of accountability sense of entitlement of wanting to stay in office. Well how unusual is the fact that the pm's ignored this royal directive to bring back parliament. I mean is that. Is that an unusual class. Even by malaysia standards. It's an extraordinarily unusual clash. Keep in mind that the rule of the it is a constitutional monarchy. The role of the monarchy in malaysia has been very minimal From a perspective of interventions and domestic politics that changed somewhat last year when we had a crisis within the governing coalition at that time and things began to split and the and the king basically Allow me at any acid to form his government at which he took over in february. Now what we see our repeated statements from the palace And repeating meetings When when every week when we had to report to the king and explained before the cabinet meeting what is going on we now have public statements coming out about what their conversations about our about. And i'm sure from the parallel you don't see other constitutional monarchy monarchs making statements about the things that they're having in terms of private conversations unless they want to be making very clear their statements and and basically putting pressure on the government to resign. I was gonna ask you about these privates Discussions backroom deal something of a hallmark of malaysian democracy. And it was interesting and there was a One of the directors of the penang institute talking to monaco described the situation as looking like a roulette table which is either amusing or terrifying depending on your your view of things. How what if. It is a roulette table. How high are the stakes. And how concerned should we be that. There's not any kind of imminent resolution to this crisis. I think the issue is that the real gamble is that they're gambling with malaysians lives. The government has had very serious competency issues in its management of covert before emergency was declared. We had there. Were only three thousand cases now. Six months later they're over. Twenty one thousand cases in which the government itself with its low testing admits could be three times that much so in the sense of the way the political the politics is playing out We do see a situation where the power of office is being used to advantage But the government has been in the system as a whole has been basically caught because of the inability to be able to call an election to resolve the crisis Given the high numbers of cova cases that exist bridge a really interesting stuff. Thanks for your time here on the program. That's bridget welsh of the university of nottingham asia institute malaysia. You're listening to a monocle. Twenty four is proud to partner the briefing on monocle. Twenty.