http://dapmalaysia.org  

Parliament proving to be utterly irrelevant as majority of MPs are lazy, want an easy life and good time in Kuala Lumpur and not prepared to put in long hours as having debates till midnight to address the grave issues confronting Malaysians from SARS, dengue epidemic, educational crisis, Suhakam reports to adverse economic repercussions of Iraq war Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang (Penang,  Tuesday): The protests by Opposition and a handful of conscientious Barisan Nasional MPs in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday to the 10-minute rule imposed by Deputy Speaker, Datuk Lim Si Cheng, for the policy debate on the Supplementary Supply Bill 2003 has highlighted the worst marginalization of Parliament in its 45- year history. The fourth 2002 supplementary estimates totaling RM22.1 billion presented yesterday is the largest single supplementary budgetary request ever made by the government in the history of Malaysia, and it is an utter disgrace that MPs allowed themselves to be treated so contemptuously as mere rubber stamp of the will of the Executive with MPs rationed to only 10 minutes each for debate. In the early 1960s, the total annual Federal budget expenditure did not even reach RM1 billion, but there would be 11 days of policy debate to approve the budgetary allocations for less than RM1 billion - while in 2003, MPs have only one day for the policy debate for supplementary estimates which are more than 22 times bigger than the entire Federal budget four decades ago, with MPs allowed 10 minutes each for a perfunctory debate without depth or meaning. Is parliamentary democracy in Malaysia going forwards or backwards? What happened yesterday is proof of the utter irrelevance of Parliament in 2003, largely because the majority of MPs are lazy, want an easy life and good time in Kuala Lumpur during parliamentary meetings and are not prepared to put in long hours as having debates till midnight to address the grave issues confronting Malaysians from SARS, dengue epidemic, educational crisis, Suhakam reports on human rights violations to adverse economic repercussions of Iraq war. When Parliament is in session, it should be the place where Ministers give regular reports to the nation about the great national issues, but to this date, the Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng had failed to give a full report to Parliament on SARS apart from maintaining the public stand of "no SARS cases, no suspected SARS cases or deaths caused by SARS". Chua should in fact be giving regular update reports to MPs about SARS which had long overtaken the Iraq war as the people's foremost concern, instead of trotting all over the country to wage the MCA A and B faction power struggle. Parliament becomes a farce when there is only a one-day policy debate, confined to 10-minute speeches by MPs, for budgetary allocations amounting to RM22.1 billion - for there can be no meaningful or effective parliamentary scrutiny and oversight to ensure accountability, transparency, integrity and good governance in such gargantuan expenditure of public funds. The parliamentary standing orders of one-day policy debate for RM22.1 billion budgetary allocations and 10-minute speeches by MPs should be totally overhauled as they are grossly behind times to become a straight-jacket obstructing MPs from discharging their parliamentary duties. Standing Orders should not be allowed to enslave MPs as they should serve and empower MPs. The totally one-sided, unequal and unbalanced relationship between the Parliament and the Executive must be rectified to reassert parliamentary control over the Executive, not only by the expansion of parliamentary time to scrutinize government finances and policies, but also the enhancement of parliamentary capability to exercise more meaningful control over the Executive. One effective way is to emulate the parliamentary reforms and innovations of other Commonwealth Parliaments by setting up a committee system with a specialist parliamentary committee to oversee each Ministry, which will make a great difference in the effectiveness of MPs' work as they would become specialists in their respective fields - which will reduce the likelihood of MPs talking nonsense in the Dewan Rakyat. (1/4/2003) * Lim Kit Siang, DAP National Chairman