DAP lawmaker demands apology from Pandikar over 'broken promise'

A DAP lawmaker today demanded an apology from Dewan Rakyat speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia for failing to fulfil his promise of implementing parliamentary reforms.

This is over the postponement of Minister's Question Time, initially scheduled for the current session starting May 16 until May 26, as reported on Thursday.

Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng in a statement said that Pandikar had sometime last year challenged him, as well as Tanjung MP Ng Wei Aik, that both of them must vacate their seats if the reforms he had promised were implemented by early this year.

“Will he (Pandikar) now eat his own words and apologise to us or does he still want us to resign as MPs? Because he has failed to fulfil his promise,” Lim (photo) said.

In was reported that Dewan Rakyat secretary Roosmee Hamzah in a letter to MPs, sighted by Malaysiakini, said the move was postponed because there is not enough time to implement it.

The letter dated May 11 stated that Pandikar had made the decision because the time frame given to make the necessary preparations in terms of briefings, training and simulation of the Minister's Question Time for MPs was too short.

The Minister’s Question Time will only be implemented in the Oct 17 to Nov 24 parliament session.

Lim, in response to the delay, questioned whether the reason given was actually just another "lame excuse" to "save" Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his cabinet ministers from being made to face questions from Opposition MPs on the state-linked fund 1MDB scandal.

He also pointed out that the most important out of four parliamentary reforms proposed by Pandikar, to set-up a select committee on law reforms, has been rejected by Najib’s cabinet earlier this year.

The implementation of the Special Chamber, another component of the parliamentary reform, will however go ahead in this coming parliament session.

Under the parliamentary reform, the notice to submit questions for oral or written reply from the government have also been shortened from 14 days to 10 days.-Mkini