It is a case of the teacher reminding the pupil

 

From Hafiz Hassan

On Aug 6, 2020, finance minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz stood up in the Dewan Rakyat to take his turn to deliver his winding-up speech for the finance ministry – the last in the Order Paper for the day – for the debate on the royal address by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

It was already 5.55pm, but minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (law and Parliament) Takiyuddin Hassan had earlier in the day moved that the House not be adjourned until the last minister had completed his turn to answer during the debate on the royal address.

Forty-five minutes into his speech, Zafrul was asked by his predecessor, Lim Guan Eng, about the RM3.9 billion 1MDB settlement agreement with Goldman Sachs:

“Ada keputusan Kabinet [atau] tidak tentang penyelesaian sebanyak RM3.9 bilion, sebanyak RM2.5 bilion secara tunai, sebanyak RM1.4 bilion dalam bentuk jaminan. Adakah dapat kelulusan daripada Kabinet?” [see Hansard https://parlimen.gov.my/files/hindex/pdf/DR-06082020.pdf at page 103]

When Zafrul suggested that the deal had been approved by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government, Lim disagreed.

Exchanges between Lim and Arau MP Shahidan Kassim then ensued before speaker Azhar Azizan Harun stepped in and said: “Sila duduk, sila duduk. Saya rasa ini keputusan Kementerian Kewangan dan semestinya akan dibawa ke Kabinet.”

In other words, he told the MPs to sit as he was sure the matter would have been brought to the attention of the Cabinet.

Former Dewan Rakyat speaker Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof must have read the Hansard before chastising his successor, Azhar, for being partisan when carrying out his duties.

“The speaker is a speaker of the whole house. For heaven’s sake. Someone has got to tell him,” Ariff said at an online forum yesterday.

“He or she has got to be impartial. You cannot protect a minister. You cannot suggest an answer to the minister,” Ariff added.

But Azhar should not need someone to tell him. In one of the episodes of “The Art of the Matter” on the Dewan Rakyat speaker, Azhar, or Art Harun as he was better known then, cited abuses by the former speaker before the PH government came into power.

One of the abuses was when “there were times when questions were asked of the ministers and they were not answered. Or if answered, the answers were unsatisfactorily given and the speaker did not do anything”.

“That is a clear abuse or failure to undertake his functions [as a speaker],” asserted Azhar.

So when Ariff, who once taught law at the Faculty of Law, Universiti Malaya, where Azhar read his law, said a speaker has got to be impartial, it is not about a former speaker chiding his successor.

Nor is it about the teacher chiding the pupil. It is more of the teacher reminding the pupil.

It was the pupil who himself once said: “The office of a speaker must be filled by a person of integrity, who is fiercely independent and who knows the procedures of the Parliament like the back of his hand.

“He must be able to control all the MPs properly so that we could have a discussion and a very civil but robust debate on matters of public importance.”

Hafiz Hassan is an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.