Senate president has no say on confidence motion in Dewan Rakyat - MP

 

Senate president Rais Yatim has no jurisdiction over the Dewan Rakyat, said Sepang MP Hanipa Maidin.

This is after Rais (above) was quoted as saying that the Dewan Rakyat’s standing orders would not allow for a motion of no confidence to be heard.

“Is he utterly confused? He is not even the speaker for the lower house (Dewan Rakyat).

“Who is he to transgress the jurisdiction of the Dewan Rakyat?” Hanipa said in a statement today.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s grip on power is under threat after the Umno supreme council withdrew the party’s support for him.

While most Umno MPs are expected to stick with Muhyiddin, it only requires a handful of the party's lawmakers to withdraw support for the prime minister to lose majority support of the house.

However, Rais was cited by Utusan Malaysia yesterday as saying that a motion of confidence in the upcoming Parliament sitting was not likely.

“I don’t expect it to happen, because the basis for that to happen is very limited and the standing orders do not allow anyone to move a motion of no confidence which intends to worsen the situation during the Dewan Rakyat sitting,” he said.

While motions of no confidence have never been debated in Parliament, such motions have been on the Dewan Rakyat’s order paper - a list of matters that are scheduled to be heard in the lower house.

The government itself submitted a confidence motion, which is in practice the same as a no-confidence motion, during the Dewan Rakyat sitting late last year.

This too was not brought to the floor as the sitting focused on approving Budget 2021 instead.

The upcoming Dewan Rakyat session is expected to focus on approving measures for a hybrid sitting, and to hear briefings from the government on the Covid-19 situation.

Commenting further on Rais’ remarks, Hanipa said it was not the duty of a speaker to pre-judge motions from MPs.

“It is not the duty of any speaker to make any adverse comment on any prospective motion to be filed by any MP let alone to pre-judge it.

“Fairness should become the primary attribute or quality of any speaker. His statement reflects a cogent evidence of bias .

“Lo and behold, Parliament is not a mafia club whereby threats and intimidations are orders of the day,” he said.

Meanwhile, PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told Malaysiakini that speakers should be neutral, and not get involved in politics. - Mkini