PH risks losing support over anti-hopping bill delay, says analyst

 

The memorandum of understanding between Pakatan Harapan and Putrajaya calls for the anti-hopping bill to be tabled in the first Dewan Rakyat meeting of 2022. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: The government’s move to defer the tabling of an anti-hopping bill is a setback for Pakatan Harapan (PH) as it would see its supporters lose confidence in the opposition coalition, an analyst said.

Awang Azman Pawi.

These supporters would have expected PH to exert pressure on the government with whom it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) last September, Awang Azman Pawi of Universiti Malaya said.

“So, until and unless the bill is tabled, debated and passed, we could see the public lose confidence in the leaders who signed the agreement,” he told FMT, referring to PKR’s Anwar Ibrahim, DAP’s Lim Guan Eng, Amanah’s Mohamad Sabu and Upko’s Wilfred Madius Tangau.

Under the MoU, the anti-hopping bill was supposed to be tabled during the first Dewan Rakyat meeting of this year, which ended last month.

Azmi Hassan.

Yesterday, law minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the tabling of the bill had been deferred and that the Cabinet did not agree to table it at a special Dewan Rakyat sitting on April 11.

FMT had reported that the government wanted to iron out pertinent matters like the definition of party hopping and also amend the Federal Constitution before tabling the bill.

Meanwhile, Akademi Nusantara senior fellow Azmi Hassan said the definition of party hopping was “something very basic” and one that should have been agreed upon when the bill was first formulated.

“I’m not sure which party is still not in agreement,” he said.

Oh Ei Sun.

Oh Ei Sun of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs believed that there were ministers who were perhaps under instruction from their party bosses to prevent the bill from being passed.

Oh believed that this had little to do with the substance of the bill and “has more to do with embarrassing Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaacob” and engineering his downfall.

“At some point, PH would have to make a stand as to what it would do in case of any further delay in presenting the bill, or it risks alienating its supporters further,” he said. - FMT