Emergency should have been brought before Parliament at the start, not now - Dr M

 

The briefings on the agenda for the special parliamentary sitting starting July 26 include one on the emergency proclamation, but former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the proclamation should have been brought before Parliament when it was first proposed.

“Why now? It should have been done when it was first proposed. This proclamation should go through the Dewan Rakyat and the Dewan Negara before it is approved.

“This did not happen because both Houses did not convene. After the emergency has been going on for so long, only now efforts are being made to fulfil the law in terms of the emergency proclamation,” Mahathir said in an online press conference today.

The Perikatan Nasional (PN) government has since done many things that they claimed they have a right to under the state of emergency but he insisted that it is actually an invalid emergency as it did not go through Parliament.

He said this shows the government is prepared to “abuse their power and disregard the law and constitution”.

Article 150 (3) of the Federal Constitution states that a proclamation of emergency “shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament” and shall cease to have effect if resolutions are passed by both Houses annulling the proclamation.

Now the PN government wants to use the five-day special parliamentary sitting to explain to the lawmakers what they have been doing, most of which goes against the law, Mahathir claimed.

Reiterating that the special parliamentary sitting is merely a briefing session meant to mislead the public, Mahathir nonetheless said Pejuang’s four MPs will attend it, at least in the beginning.

“If we find this is just an explanation of government policies, we may decide at that time to leave the Dewan, but we haven’t decided fully on this yet, because we want to see how the government conducts this meeting.

“Are they going to talk about the suffering of the people, or are they going to talk about legitimising the wrong things they have done?” he said.

Previously, Mahathir had said Pejuang was still deciding on whether to attend the special parliamentary sitting or not.

Today, he said the rakyat may be dissatisfied if Pejuang did not attend this upcoming Parliament sitting after calling for it to convene for so long.

“If we don’t attend, people might think we have asked for Parliament to sit and when Parliament is sitting, we don’t attend, but we want to show that this is not a real sitting of Parliament,” Mahathir said.

The special parliamentary sitting is expected to take place from July 26 to July 29 and then on Aug 2.

Dewan Rakyat Speaker Azhar Azizan Harun had also previously said the first session of the full Dewan Rakyat sitting will commence on Sept 6. - Mkini