Opposition forces bloc vote to get rare debate on private motion

PARLIAMENT | The government's short order of business in the Dewan Rakyat today presented the opposition with a rare opportunity to have a private motion heard and debated.

And its lawmakers were not going to let the government take that opportunity away from them without a fight.

While the private motion by Shahidan Kassim (Perikatan Nasional-Arau) on border CCTVs may not appear to be of any significance, it is important to understand that private motions or private member's bills rarely get heard in the Dewan Rakyat.

This is because the Standing Orders dictate that government business - bills on new laws and amendments - take precedence, meaning they can skip ahead of any private motions or bills submitted by MPs that are already in the Order Paper line-up.

The last time a private motion was heard was in 2016 when the then BN government moved to suspend its business in the Dewan Rakyat to allow PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang to read out his private member's bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act (Act 355)

In today's case, the government had just two bills with one short amendment on its list of business.

The bills to amend the Renewable Energy Act and Sustainable Energy Development Authority Act contain just one amendment, which allows the minister in charge to suspend the operation of the whole act(s) or parts of it in any part of the country.

This meant that if the bills are disposed of quickly, there might be time to debate Shahidan's motion.

However, the government sought to deny the opposition this opportunity by moving their own motion for the Dewan Rakyat proceedings today to end after the two bills are debated and passed.

Such motions are usually passed with barely any resistance during a voice vote but the opposition had other plans in mind - forcing the Dewan Rakyat to hold a bloc vote to decide on the matter.

The gambit, however, failed as the opposition was defeated 83-52.

In a press conference after the vote, Takiyuddin Hassan (PN-Kota Bharu) said the government motion to end today's proceedings once it has disposed of the bills shows that the ruling coalition was not serious about doing its work.

"It indirectly means the government wants to leave, chow, early, they have no more work to do, (except to) make films," he said, taking a veiled jibe at Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's biopic.

"We (the opposition) are serious, we came to Parliament to follow proceedings to debate, make motions and so on, but we were not given the opportunity by the government through Parliament today," he said. - Mkini