WHAT NEXT CAN NAJIB STEAL? ‘FIRST THEY STOLE OUR MONEY THROUGH 1MDB, THEN THEY STOLE OUR ELECTION VIA REDELINEATION & NOW THEY STEAL OUR FREEDOWN WITH ‘FAKE NEWS’…

When election is near, strange things happen. How strange is it, you ask me? A ghost came to parliament last week. But I am getting way ahead of myself.

Let me begins with Monday, 26 March 2018. The week opened with three Members of Parliament, Ngeh Koo Ham (DAP-Beruas), Nga Kor Ming (DAP-Taiping), V Sivakumar (DAP-Batu Gajah), being suspended by Dewan Rakyat Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia. The reason the suspension? Simply because the trio voiced objection against the Speaker for rejecting an emergency motion on Jho Low’s luxury yacht, Equanimity, seized by the Indonesian authority and other 1MDB-related questions. Pandikar has consistently rejected 1MDB questions in the past, citing among others, the issue being subjudice as it is being tried in the USA. Instead of allowing parliament to debate on 1MDB, dubbed the Mother of All Scandals in Malaysia, the Speaker chose to respond to allegations of his compromised impartiality by resorting to high-handed actions against parliamentarians.

Moving on to Wednesday, 28 March 2018. Prime Minister Najib Razak was supposed to table a motion on electoral boundary redelineation. The motion consisted a report by the Election Commission (EC) which was distributed to MPs six days before. The report however was embargoed even though distributed earlier. In fact, when it was first distributed on 22 March 2018, the Speaker said that MPs were not allowed to read it nor to bring it out of the House until six days later. His exact words, according to the Hansard, “Boleh feel, boleh pegang sehingga Rabu… jangan bawa pergi mana-mana…” (You can feel it, and hold it until Wednesday… [but] do not bring it out…”).

As such, prior to the tabling of the motion by the PM, Lim Kit Siang, MP for Gelang Patah, stood up to question who gave the power to enforce such embargo on the EC report. The Speaker not only refused to entertain Lim’s simple question, he ordered him to leave the House. When Lim refused to back down, Pandikar called on the government to move a motion naming Lim to suspend him from Parliament for six months.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Azalina Othman moved the motion to suspend Lim under Standing Order 44(3). No debate nor vote was called on the motion. Pandikar then adjourned the House but before that he threatened to call in the police if Lim is still in the House after the adjournment. For a Speaker in a democratic Parliament to make such statement is utterly shocking. Parliamentary tradition does not allow armed personnel to enter the House. About four hundred years ago, in 1642, when King Charles I entered the House of Common with armed guards to arrest parliamentarians, he triggered the English civil which ended with the beheading of the king himself. To this day, because of that incident, the British monarch is not allowed into the House of Common.

Since Azalina’s motion was not debated nor voted upon, Lim stood his ground and remained in the House till the end of the day’s session. 

However, when a division (voting) was taken at the end of the redelineation motion, Lim who was present and voted against the motion, was not counted by the Speaker.

We are still in Wednesday, 28 March, and the PM eventually tabled the motion at about noon. For such an important motion which will affect the future of our country, only five opposition MPs were allowed to debate. Even then, each MP only had 10 minutes. Members of the civil society, election watchdogs and scholars have called the government’s redelineation plan a malapportionment where electorate size was manipulated to advantage the ruling party. One glaring evidence of such gerrymandering is, after the redelineation, the average number of voters per constituency for Barisan Nasional seats is 59,969, while for the Opposition, it is 83,150.

Another critical problem of the redelineation is a worsening of racial division when the so-called super-Chinese and super-Malay majority constituencies are created. Some heterogeneous constituencies were reapportioned to become single race majority constituencies; For example, Lumut, which was previously 51% Malays, 35% Chinese, 12% Indians and 1.5% Others will become 71% Malays, 16% Chinese, 12% Indians and 1% Others. MCA and Gerakan leaders had voiced their objection against the redelineation in the media because of this reason. Yet when it came to voting in Parliament, all MCA and Gerakan MPs including their presidents who objected in the media earlier, voted to support the redelineation.

The next day, on 29 March 2018, our ghost appeared in Parliament. Let me explain.

After the morning question time, UMNO’s MP for Setiu stood up to point out that Lim Kit Siang was still seated in the House despite being suspended by Speaker the day before. Pandikar ruled that, reading Lord Selwyn Llyod’s memoir, “Mr. Speaker, Sir”, he found inspiration to “just turn a blind eye as if you don’t see.” As such he ruled that he “does not see” the Member for Gelang Patah in the House, even though he was there, and therefore the honourable Member cannot participate in the proceeding of the House. In other words, the Speaker will treat Lim Kit Siang as invisible. Pandikar was clearly aware that he was setting a precedence. The Speaker of the House of course is a very powerful position. Many are already familiar with how the Speaker can “stop the clock” to allow parliamentary proceedings to go on beyond 12 midnight. But in this case, Pandikar can also rule that someone is invisible and inaudible in the House.

Barisan Nasional backbenchers and Ministers had a field day with the ruling. Minister of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, Noh Omar mocked Lim saying he heard a very familiar voice but cannot see anyone, and at one point, UMNO’s Sungai Besar MP shouted, “There is a ghost’s voice” to which Noh Omar agreed.

A ghost was in Parliament that day. But if anything, he is the Spirit of Conscience of our Nation. No wonder those who are blind to their own conscience and support a kleptocrat failed to hear and see him.

I am not an expert on Lord Llyod’s Speakership, but a simple research showed that Llyod’s action of being “deaf or indeed blind” was actually to justify his inaction to discipline an opposition MP. The said MP had physically attacked the Home Secretary in the House! And yet for a variety of reasons, Llyod refused to take any disciplinary action against her, and hence, his statement that “there are times when the Chair can appropriately be deaf or indeed blind.” Lloyd was trying to protect a minority MP (who had physically harmed a Minister!) from being disciplined while Pandikar was punishing a minority MP for merely asking a question.

After lunch, on the same day we had a ghost in Parliament, at about 2.30pm,  the government tabled yet another controversial law, this time the Anti-Fake News Bill 2018. This Orwellian legislation gives the government power to decide what is “true” and “fake” news. Anyone convicted under this law can be jailed upto 10 years or half a million ringgit fine or both. If passed, the new law will be another addition to the strings of anti-democratic, draconian legislations already in placed. Only about a month before, artist Fahmi Reza was sentenced to one month jail and fined RM30,000 merely for drawing a clown caricature of the Prime Minister under the Communication and Multimedia Act.

The original plan was to bulldoze through this Bill on the same day, but somehow, the session was adjourned to be continued on the following Monday.

Within just a short time of four days’ sitting, the government had tried to steal our election and then our freedom. This is perhaps our “First they came…” moment:

First they stole our money through 1MDB,

Some of us did not speak up;

Then they try to steal our election through redelineation,

Still, there are some who did not speak up;

Then they want to steal our freedom with the Anti-Fake News Act,

Stubbornly, some still did not speak up,

When finally they come to steal our future;

It may already be too late to speak up.

It was an exhausting and a very strange week in Parliament: from the high-handedness of the Speaker to suspend four opposition MPs in one week, to the secretive book which was given to MPs but cannot be read for six days, to the action against Lim Kit Siang, the threat to call in the police, the passing of a gerrymandering act, the tabling of an Orwellian Anti-Fake News law, the Speaker’s power to turn Parliament blind and deaf, and finally, the appearance of a ghost in Parliament.

Strange things happen when the election is near. Or rather the government is acting very strangely, almost like an insane person. Perhaps the ancient Greeks were right to say, “those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

Steven Sim is the MP for Bukit Mertajam.

– MAILBAG