Fireworks guaranteed at Perak assembly sitting

BN is set to keep the budget sitting on Monday short and sweet, coupled with sufficient dose of ammunition to hit at Pakatan reps

COMMENT

It has been more than two years since the Perak power-grab orchestrated by BN enabled them to take control of the Silver State on Feb 5, 2009.

Since then, the Perak State Assembly sittings have always been chaotic affairs due to the antics of the BN-installed Speaker who never fails to switch-off the microphones of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers.

The upcoming Perak State Assembly sitting on Monday Nov 21 promises to be exciting as the court-installed Menteri Besar Zambry Abdul Kadir will be presenting the Perak 2012 Budget.

It must be mentioned that the Perak State Assembly is the only one of its kind in the world after the BN-masterminded power grab. Moreover, the BN speaker silences the voice of the PR lawmakers by switching off the latter’s microphones.

In a Machiavellian and well-executed move planned during the 2009 Chinese Lunar New Year period, three state assemblymen from PR declared themselves to be BN-friendly and that was the coup-de-grace that toppled Perak.

Subsequently, the court battles between the PAS Menteri Besar Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin and the BN-installed Menteri Besar Zambry ended on Feb 9, 2010 with the Federal Court’s 5-0 decision in favour of Zambry as the legal and valid Menteri Besar.

Chief Judge of Malaya Justice Arifin Zakaria, who read out the decision said the Bench found that the Court of Appeal was justified in reversing the High Court decision which had earlier declared Nizar as the rightful Perak Menteri Besar.

That the Court Of Appeal’s decision was expected was not surprising but what was surprising was the 5-0 verdict as many had expected it to be a close verdict of 3-2. Nizar had labelled the verdict as the death of democracy.

Be that as it may, a recap of state assembly sittings post-Feb 5, 2009, revealed that after the coup on that said date there has been nothing but constant bullying of the Pakatan state assemblymen by BN lawmakers making it difficult for the Pakatan men to fulfill their duties.

One of the most famous events that should be remembered by all those who fight for democracy is the Democracy Tree Assembly held on March 3, 2009, where the PR state assemblymen were forced to hold the Dewan sitting by assembling under a huge rainforest tree near the Perak DAP HQ due to being locked out of the State Secretariat Building where the Dewan sittings take place.

The road leading to the State Secretariat Building was being barricaded by hundreds of FRU and police force personnel on March 3, 2009 in BN’s show of force in clamping down on democracy.

This solemn yet moving assembly under the rainforest tree was really a people’s assembly as it was held alfresco with members of the public being present in the Dewan itself, standing together shoulder-to-shoulder with the Pakatan state assemblymen as the Speaker, DAP’s V Sivakumar called the assembly to order according to proctocol proceedings.

Many of those present were moved to tears at this event which was later made into a DVD entitled ‘The Democracy Tree DVD’. A plaque mounted up at the assembly spot commemorating the event was vandalised and broken up but the broken fragments were later auctioned off for the purpose of fund-raising and Pakatan managed to collect a tidy sum of about RM40,000.

Black Thursday

Another memorable event was the ‘Black Thursday Incident’, otherwise known as ‘The Chair Incident’ which occurred on May 7, 2009.
Black was the colour worn by those in solidarity with the PR state assemblymen to symbolize mourning for democracy which has died.
Scores of people were arrested by the police for wearing black. Among those arrested were Wong Chin Huat (a university lecturer and social activist of Bersih), Pakatan MPs and state assemblymen from outside Perak and members of the public.

This incident was also known as the ‘The Chair Incident’ due to the chaotic incident surrounding the Speaker’s Chair.
While there was chaos outside the State Secretariat Building due to the mass arrests of protesters in black, inside the Dewan there was pandemonium as well.

Dewan Speaker Sivakumar of Tronoh together with his chair was forcefully bundled out of the Dewan not only by Dewan personnel who took instructions from Zambry but also by ‘unidentified forces’ (there were many unidentified people in the Dewan at that material time) and locked up in the store room for about an hour while BN ‘installed’ MIC’s Ganesan as Speaker in an investiture ceremony (putting the Speaker’s robe on him).

All hell broke loose as the Pakatan side protested strongly against what was going on although the situation was very intimidating with hundreds of policemen inside and outside the Dewan.

It was absolute shambles on May 7, 2009! A black event indeed.

There was also a nasty incident on Oct 28, 2009 called ‘The Ambush In The Tunnel’. In this incident, the PR state assemblymen were not allowed to enter the Dewan using the main door but were instead instructed to enter the Dewan via the tunnel from the car park.

While walking in the tunnel passageway towards the Dewan, the Pakatan state assemblymen were beaten up and the worst to suffer were Sivakumar who was strangled and punched in the stomach while DAP’s Nga Kor Ming (state rep of Pantai Remis) had his testicles grabbed during the melee. Nga subsequently made a police report in regards to that.

All the Perak State Assembly sittings after the BN power-grab has been lop-sided affairs.

Only the BN lawmakers are allowed to participate as the Pakatan side have been silenced due to their microphones being switched off.
These acrimonious sittings have also provided BN with an excuse to indulge in name-calling with Zambry calling Nizar ‘bangang’ and ‘bahlol’ (translated as ‘moron’ and ‘ignoramus’ respectively) in the state assembly sitting in April this year.

Short meetings

The assembly sittings during Zambry’s tenure also tend to be short, sometimes lasting about three hours only as the BN lawmakers took the opportunity to bulldoze everything through especially Supply Bills where additional allocation of funds are disbursed.

These Supply Bills are an excuse for BN to obtain their budget allocations.

During Nizar’s 11-month tenure, he managed to keep the books in the black but now the BN state government has already incurred a budget deficit although this was vehemently denied by Zambry who stated that the state had plenty of reserves.

Zambry had claimed that the state had high reserves valued at more than RM800 million according to book value in the form of investment stocks and fixed deposits while Pakatan state assemblymen claimed that Perak has a record budget deficit of almost RM104 million.

Under the BN administration, besides financial fiascos, there were other not-so-common mishaps (besides an increase in road mishaps) leading to loss of lives.

Among these not-so-common mishaps were an old building which crumbled and fell on two Malay youths killing them while three Indian female pupils lost their lives doing a night crossing on the Kuala Dipang bridge in a school excursion and three Chinese youths lost their lives swimming in the waterfalls.1Malaysia indeed! All these catastrophes happened in the later part of 2009.

However, the greatest loss of lives occurred was in the Simpang Pulai bus crash in in 2010 where 28 people (mostly tourists from Thailand) died in one of Malaysia’s most horrific road accidents in history.

In regards to mismanagement, the proposal to turn Perak into a ‘shoe city’ for tourism purposes in December last year seem to have fizzled out from the radar.

And the most recent fiasco was in early May 2011 where Zambry blamed the state’s investment arm, Perak State Development Corporation for failing to brief him on the now-cancelled memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a company from Hong Kong which had intentions to mine rare earth in Bukit Merah.

Zambry being the said corporation’s chairman should have known what is going on and this indicates that he does not attend the board meetings eventhough this is such an important agency under his supervision.

This whole incident simply shows that Zambry is sleeping on the job.

Besides the above fiascoes, the more recent one earlier this year involves a snake. A village representative from Kampung DBI named S Subramaniam presented Zambry with a python as a means of attracting attention to their woes and also to seek assistance from the state authorities to get rid of the snake menace troubling the villagers and endangering their lives.

Sightings of snakes are common in the village and according to online news portal TV Selangor, a villager had died recently after being bitten by a snake. The state authorities’ inaction despite many complaints was the cause of the villagers presenting Zambry with the python.

It is high time Perakians wake up and vote in an efficient government if they want their problems solved quickly and the state’s finances to remain healthy, snakes notwithstanding.

By the way, the forthcoming state assembly will predictably end up in shambles no thanks to BN running it in a haphazard manner. Imminent bombardment is in store for the PR lawmakers, though.

Selena Tay believes that Pakatan Rakyat will be better at governing the nation. She is a FMT columnist.