Perak’s kangaroo state assembly? — Selena Tay

The recent Perak State Assembly sitting was held from November 30 to December 4.

It was a farce from the very beginning as the large presence of uniformed personnel transformed the State Secretariat surroundings into resembling a military camp.

The proceedings started with the BN “Speaker” Ganesan announcing that everyone must address him as “Tuan Speaker”. This was the first time in history that this type of request was being made. It showed that he was not confident of his position. The “Speaker” also shortened Question Time from one-and-a-half hours to one hour.

On the first day itself, PKR Hutan Melintang assemblyman S. Kesavan was booted out for the whole term sitting for no apparent reason without first being referred to the Rights and Privileges Committee. The only reason seems to be because he asked why he and the other PR assemblymen were not given a chance during Question Time.

From the Perak State Budget for 2011, it is certain that the 13th general election will be held early next year. There were lots of little goodies and instant noodles, for example, Kampung Boyan in Taiping gets RM3.5 million for a flood-mitigation project, which was long outstanding, affecting 3,000 village folk.

During the four days of the Perak State Assembly sitting, all the doors except one were locked and all the PR assemblymen’s microphones were constantly switched off by Ganesan.

The DAP’s Nga Kor Ming asked why most of the reporters were kept in the “aquarium”, only to be shot down by the BN assemblyman for Pengkalan Baru, who asked whether Nga also wanted to be suspended. The tone of the whole sitting was one of bullying with the PR side always under heavy bombardment from BN.

Zambry Abdul Kader (the court-installed mentri besar) never answered the questions of the PR assemblymen but instead he constantly took the opportunity to attack PR by way of insults and accused PR assemblymen of behaving in a rowdy manner. At one point, instead of answering a simple question from Nga, he gave a sarcastic speech attacking Nga. He avoided answering Nga but instead twisted the issue. Nga’s microphone was switched off, so he could not reply.

It was revealed that Perak has a debt of RM903 million as at 2010. When it was the turn of Opposition Leader Nizar Jamaluddin of PAS to speak on the Budget, he was interrupted by BN assemblymen 17 times, by Ganesan 11 times and his microphone was switched off 23 times, all in the space of 50 minutes. Incredible!

Irrelevant topics were also being brought up. One such topic was the number of Malays in the DAP. The BN’s Pengkalan Hulu assemblyman made a statement that there were racist elements in the DAP while the Kubu Gajah representative asked how many Malays were in the DAP. The DAP’s Sivakumar of Tronoh replied that there are Malays in the DAP and also asked him how many Indians and Chinese were in Umno.

Nizar also brought up the issue of the large police presence at the State Secretariat building, the case of land in Hutan Melintang being given to Umno leaders and also how much did it cost to take out a four-page advertisement of the Budget in a local Malay daily but all these questions were not answered by the BN.

BN assemblymen’s incompetence was also very evident when Dr Mah Hang Soon of Chenderiang said he had been fighting for a minimum wage since 2005. That was nothing compared to DAP’s Sivanesan of Sungkai who was fighting for the same cause since 1985!

BN assemblymen also had the knack of using time-wasting tactics and Kubu Gajah was the main user of such tactics. At one point he raised a supplementary question where no one understood what he was asking. But Zambry seemed to answer it well. Was it pre-scripted? Kubu Gajah also brought up another supplementary question on assembly attire but without directing it at anyone. The DAP’s Ngeh Koo Ham tried to intervene but was disallowed from doing so.

So much for the affairs of this world! In regard to affairs of the supernatural, PAS’s Khalil Idham Lim was referred to the Rights and Privileges Committee for asking who was the BN assemblyman who brought in a bomoh into the assembly hall during the Black Thursday assembly sitting on May 7, 2009.

Overall, the PR assemblymen had little chance to raise their questions and issues and when they did they were not given any answers except insults and sarcastic remarks. At one point, Zambry commented that there were many frogs in the Dewan (he of all people saying this!) and one of them was Ngeh, who was said to be “from MCA”. Ngeh promptly stood up and denied it vehemently, calling it a BN lie.

The BN assemblyman for Temenggor also made an allegation that the Selangor state exco is corrupt. BN “Speaker” Ganesan instructed Temenggor to withdraw the allegation but then flip-flopped on his own instruction.

In his rebuttal, Zambry only did these things:

a) defended his mother who was given land;

b) defended his actions in a religious rite of another religion; and

c) defended Umno in land misappropriation matters.

His arguments had no points and were not based on facts. Major issues were not given addressed such as the State Budget deficit, the potential environmental pollution of Teluk Rubiah and farmers’ land given to BN cronies.

It was clearly evident that the people’s welfare was not BN’s main concern. BN’s power grab in Perak was illegal and against the rule of law. But now that they have Perak in their grasp, the land in Perak is now being grabbed by its cronies. This is a double-grab: grab Perak and grab the land in Perak.

This writer hopes Perakians will be wise enough to return Perak to Pakatan Rakyat before all their land is in BN’s hands and judging by what’s going on, it may not be long before that happens. The recently-concluded Perak assembly sitting was one of chaos and disorder due to BN’s bullying of PR assemblymen. Nizar summed it up best by referring to it as a Kangaroo State Assembly although this writer is sure that he has no intention of insulting kangaroos. — harakahdaily.net/en

* Selena Tay is a member of the PAS Supporters Congress (DHPP).

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.