The Dewan Rakyat must be urgently reformed PRESS RELEASE Today the Dewan Rakyat will commence its final session of the year. I remain suspended for having suggested that parliament is a rubber stamp. In its current state, the Dewan Rakyat cannot perform the functions expected of a legislature in a democratic country. The task of the Dewan Rakyat is not just to pass bills brought by the government. It is an essential task of parliament to scrutinize, criticize and debate the policies and actions of the government. In short, the biggest task of parliament is to be a check upon the government. However, the standing orders and the policy of the BN government do not allow this to happen. The opposition has no opportunity of bringing any motions for debate as all of the Dewans time is devoted to government business only. Opposition motions are placed upon the order paper, but never allowed to be debated. This is in contrast to the UK and other Commonwealth parliaments where opposition days are allotted to enable opposition motions to be debated. The refusal to allot opposition days has a crippling effect upon the Dewan Rakyats key function as a check upon the Executive. Similarly, no time at all is given for private members bills, thus giving the government a stranglehold on passing new laws and preventing crucial discussion and development of the law. Even MPs questions to Ministers have to be submitted many weeks earlier, thus making the questions ineffectual and stale, and preventing questions from being asked on matters of national interest and urgency. This is in contrast to UK, Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth countries where questions can be asked of Ministers on very short notice or no notice at all. To make things worse, motions on urgent matters ( usul segera) brought by the opposition, which is allowed by the standing orders, are almost never allowed to be debated by the Speaker. The Dewan Rakyat is funded by the Rakyat in order to scrutinize government action and act as a key pillar of our democracy. It is critical that the government implement urgent reforms to allow: a) opposition days b) private members bills c) shortened notice for questions to ministers d) scrutiny of bills by select committees PM Najib Razak must realize that we can never become the best democracy in the world if our Parliament is not urgently reformed. Issued by, N SURENDRAN MP PADANG SERAI 7th October 2014
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 02:20:55 +0000
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