Pure Puppetry in Parliament

Martin Jalleh

See how well the Speaker of Parliament in Bolehland performs to every pull and push by the hideous hands of the Umno political Masters in Parliament.

So pliantly and passionately Pandikar Amin plays and dances to their every tug and tune, much to Umno's great delight, pleasure and purpose.

So pleasingly the former Kota Marudu Umno division chief mouths and moves at every prompting, with perfect poise and pace, assisted by his deputies and political props in Parliament.

So slavishly he parrots and faithfully acts out the self-serving script of his political Masters (who believe they are superior beings) and whom he knows could at any time pull the plug on him!

See how he panders to Umno without question or pause. Parliamentary principles, procedures and processes are pooh-poohed. Policies and amendments are pushed through by brute majority.

Alas, with each passing day, the Speaker’s great pretence at being independent and impartial in the country’s supreme law-making body increasingly protrudes and becomes glaringly prominent!

As Speaker of Parliament, Pandikar Amin has become so painfully predictable! But apparently he is a stranger to the sense of shame!

He has allowed himself to be reduced to a pygmy Speaker, one who easily loses his cool and control and who is intelligent enough only at sending out and suspending Opposition MPs, especially those who refuse to bow and bend at his bidding and behest.

His reputation plummets as he ensures that Umno’s agenda takes precedence over Parliament. The people elected their political representatives. He has made it his primary role to throw them out on Umno’s orders!

Such is the sad story of a man who pathetically allows a government which for the past 53 years has shamelessly perfected and practised the art of political manipulation or puppetry, to bulldoze its way through sheer majoritism!

Such was the tragedy that the Speaker was willingly led by the nose by the Minister in the PM’s Department who is also the overseer of parliamentary affairs and the de facto (read as “defective”) Law Minister, one who has no equal in his contemptuous behaviour in parliament.

The suspending of Anwar and the three prominent MPs from Parliament can only be seen as the pinnacle of Umno’s arrogance. It also reflects very poorly on the PM who has been promising radical and relevant changes in the country.

Umno has not changed at all. It still makes use of the nation’s key democratic institutions in their dirty and desperate political game to cling on to power and to contain, cripple and crush legitimate dissent and/or to hinder genuine change advocated by the Opposition.

Najib’s purported change and his attempts to portray the BN as an agent of change is only but hypocrisy par excellence! He is in fact the chief puppeteer!