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Sunday, July 15, 2018

Umno: Postpone Dewan Rakyat sitting, follow rules on choosing speaker

Annuar Musa has doubts on whether Pakatan Harapan submitted the name 14 days before-hand, and says due process must be followed.
Umno secretary-general Annuar Musa has doubts about whether Pakatan Harapan followed the rules.
GEORGE TOWN: Umno secretary-general Annuar Musa has called for the Dewan Rakyat sitting to be postponed until due process is followed in the appointment of a speaker.
He questioned whether the government had followed procedures and submitted the name of its nominee in time.
A former judge, Mohamad Ariff Yusof, is to be proposed by Pakatan Harapan. His name was confirmed today by Pakatan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Under Dewan Rakyat rules, the name of a nominee and his acceptance of nomination must be submitted to the House at least 14 days before the Dewan Rakyat’s first sitting. The Speaker is elected by MPs in a secret ballot.
The House is scheduled to meet tomorrow, for the swearing-in of MPs elected at the May general election.
The government has said it sent the name of the nominee to the House on July 2. However, Annuar, who is MP for Ketereh, asked if the nomination letter had been backdated. “Is there some silap mata (sleight of hand) in this?”
“Eight years ago, when we wanted to nominate Pandikar Amin Mulia as speaker, the secretary of the House flew to Kota Kinabalu to affirm his letter of undertaking,” Annuar said.
Annuar noted that there had been conflicting statements by Pakatan Harapan leaders about the choice of nominee, and reports had emerged that the coalition’s presidential council had made its decision only recently.
He called out Pakatan Harapan for not being able to “observe a simple basic rule to name your nominee in 14 days”.
“Where is the rule of law in all of this? It is best for the Dewan Rakyat sitting be held at a later date, to allow due process for the election of the speaker,” he told FMT.
‘Ariff a good choice’
Another Umno leader, former minister Nazri Aziz, said there was a precedent for a former judge becoming speaker. He said the longest-serving speaker was former judge Mohamed Zahir Ismail, who served from 1982 to 2004.
“It is a very wise decision to put a former judge as speaker. I hope he discharges his duties fairly, which I am confident he will.”
DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang was similarly confident of Ariff’s abilities and said Ariff would be a catalyst in reforming Parliament to a world-class level.
“Under Ariff, Malaysians will have a Parliament they can feel proud of… not one which is like the traditional three monkeys with eyes that see not, ears that hear not and mouth that speaks not,” he said.
‘Greater access for journalists’
DAP’s MP for Ipoh Barat M Kulasegaran, meanwhile, urged the Dewan Rakyat to allow journalists access to the lobby to meet legislators for short interviews and unofficial press conferences.
He said the press corps had been confined to a dungeon-like media room on a lower floor.
“There should also not be any restrictions that prevent the freedom of the press,” he said, “although the speaker could ask for decorum when they are allowed at the lobby.”
Journalists were barred from the lobby by the previous speaker, Pandikar Amin Mulia, who said most MPs were uncomfortable with the press lingering in the lobby and he himself had felt “uneasy”.
The National Union of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists have both condemned the restriction. -FMT

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