Ahead of a mid-May target to collect a minimum of 500 signatures for a parliamentary petition to discipline absent MPs, political activist Roshinee Mookaiah has nearly doubled the required support.
Speaking to Malaysiakini, Roshinee (above) said that, apart from her weekend signature collection drives, now in its third week, she has also received assistance from individual volunteers, including one in London.
“I have a friend in London also collecting signatures from Malaysian students there, and she is passing it to me when she travels back to Malaysia in May,” said Roshinee.
Roshinee first announced her “Dilarang Ponteng Parlimen” (don’t skip parliamentary sessions) project through a series of videos and articles on various social media platforms, based on a formal petition with four main demands and elaborations for further action.
Among others, the petition highlights the lack of specific policies governing attendance and recommends formal guidelines to enable action against consistently absent MPs.
The process is provided for under the parliamentary Standing Orders, and for the petition to be submitted, it must meet two conditions: it must be signed by more than 500 adult citizens and endorsed by an elected MP who will present it in the Dewan Rakyat.
“At the moment, I have about 819 signatures, and I am confident of reaching 1,000 signatures by this weekend.
“I think we will have comfortably more than 1,000 signatures for the official submission cause I am collecting till mid-May,” she said.
The petition was launched as a citizen-driven initiative to address absent MPs, a recurring problem that, on March 2, led to the government’s failure to pass the constitutional amendment bill limiting the prime minister’s term to 10 years.
MP’s support
The Dewan Rakyat will resume its next sitting on June 22, and Roshinee said that while she has approached an MP to table the petition in Parliament, their identity will only be revealed at a later date.
Last Sunday, Roshinee revealed that her team was forced to relocate from the Perdana Botanical Gardens in Kuala Lumpur at the behest of the park’s management for staging a “protest” without a permit from Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL).
Recalling the incident, Roshinee said a DBKL officer had insisted that they required a “permit” to “protest”, despite her insistence on their right to peacefully assemble.
Since then, Roshinee said her social media posting of the incident had prompted a response from the office of Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Federal Territories) Hannah Yeoh, with a pledge of support.
“Yesterday, an officer from the minister’s office reached out to me [...] I followed up with an email and received an assurance that our plans this Saturday (May 2) will not be disrupted,” she said.
As such, Roshinee said that her team of volunteers will once again gather around a “DBKL dice statue” to the right of the Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad building from 9.30am to 2pm, with physical copies of the petition for signing.
In her past engagements with the public, Roshinee said that among the frequently asked questions were why she launched the petition and details of its demands.
“There were also some valid questions about how I will ensure the documents will not be tampered with when I submit them to an MP or when the MP submits them to Parliament.
“Some people were scared that some signatures might be removed, to which I said I will be numbering each person’s submission, and I will know how many pages we submit,” she said.
“While I cannot control what happens after the submission stage, I can ensure that we keep track exactly how many signatures we have when we do submit,” she added.
Apart from a signature, each person must also include their full name, MyKad number, and address as listed on their MyKad. - Mkini
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