Dewan Negara, To Abolish Or To Reform It?
Unlike the Dewan Rakyat, the members of the Dewan Negara carrying the title of Senator are not elected by the people. They are all appointed by the respective state governments and the King (Yang Di Pertuan Agong) and serve a term of three years, of which their tenure can either be renewed or terminated at the pleasure of the respective state governments or the King. For those appointed by the King are usually nominees selected by the sitting federal government in Putrajaya and the King merely endorses those federal appointees by bestowing them with an official appointments.
Recently, the DAP National Chairman Karpal Singh has called for the abolition of the Dewan Negara citing its ineffectiveness in our nation's legislature system. After Karpal's call for the Dewan Negara's abolition, there are also many others from the political divide and the general public as well calling for the Dewan Negara to be reformed in order to turn the institution into an effective check and balance legislative body.
However, the federal government which is still being held by the Barisan Nasional (BN) is still keeping quiet and have yet to respond to such calls until todate.
As we all knew, the Dewan Negara has been dominated by the appointees selected from amongst members of the BN coalition parties for decades. In this case, whatever bills or laws which has been enacted by the lower house, Dewan Rakyat for many years has easily gone through the Dewan Negara without any proper or effective debates nor any scrutiny has been carried out.
Asides, the Dewan Negara also did not have any senate select committees to oversee the various areas or portfolios of the federal government in order to scrutinise or to provide any check and balance onto the policies and implementations of the administration. So, whatever is being done or being carried out by the Dewan Rakyat or the federal government are simply being handover to the Dewan Negara for a mere endorsement or some sort of formality prior to its official gazetting to become a law or the implementation is being stamped as approved.
In this case, was there any effectiveness on the functional system of the Dewan Negara? So many decades ago, did we see the performance of the members of the Dewan Negara? Have they been effective in providing various checks and balance? Did all these senators perform as per our people's demands and expectations? Have we see these senators on the ground providing their services to the people? Well, to be honest, we have not seen any senators performing on the ground. Even majority of our people are also not aware that there are senators appointed to sit in the Dewan Negara.
By the way, our younger generations are also unaware that there is a Dewan Negara exist above the Dewan Rakyat. On two reported occasions, one from an international hotel and the other from a renowned restaurant, both the staffs of these two locations had deliberately address the arriving customer (a prominent member of the Dewan Negara) as "Mr Senator". And when asked why are they addressing their customer as "Mr Senator", we were told that "Senator" was the name or the "Christian name" of the said customer. See, even most of our people do even know what is the meaning of Senator!
So, this institution has been very ineffective. No doubt it exist in accordance to the provision and articles of the Federal Constitution, does it serves its purpose? Does it demonstrates its effectiveness? Most importantly, does it really exist in the general public? To many of us, they don't even exist at all.
Generally speaking, if they do not exist in actual fact, then the public funds, provisions and allocations which are being provided to them has been a waste all these years. It has been a very big wastage, be it in funds (amount), time and energies for maintaining such an ineffective institutions for so many decades.
For decades, most of the appointees to the Dewan Negara had came from amongst the ruling BN coalition parties and as the result of that, the entire institution has been turned into a mere yes-yes men body. They are not elected by the people to serve, but instead they are being appointed by their party leaders to serve only the interests of their respective leaders.
Then, looking at the current condition of the Dewan Negara, to abolish it or to reform it? To the DAP's Karpal Singh, he is calling for the abolishment of the said upper house in the parliament as he sees no opportunity at all, under the BN government to reform the Dewan Negara, whereas our people has decided to put up a civic pressure onto the government to reform the institution to reflect its effectiveness to our people and the entire nation. The big problem here is, will the reform on the Dewan Negara take place under the current ruling BN government? The BN has been governing this nation for decades and going on with that kind of Dewan Negara too, for decades. In this term, we should say, the BN leaders are comfortable with the existing kind of system even though it has been proven to be ineffective.
The ineffectiveness, that we have been observing, is the Dewan Negara is full of political rejects, those BN candidates who had contested in the general elections and lost, then got appointed as Senators in order to get into the ministerial positions, likewise, we would consider it a backdoor appointment. Apart from that the Dewan Negara is also full of retired politicians, also particularly from the BN side.
Yes, we must also admit and recognise some of those representatives from the minorities and those of some particular interests or industries in the Dewan Negara, but again the question here is, how effective are they as well? They are only serving the interests of some particular group or communities, and not the entire segment of our nation.
Well, the fact that is, our people has realize that there is an institution currently operating in a mere wastage of public funds and allocations every year. The Opposition coalition had also increased their presence in the parliament through the recently concluded general elections and they are putting up a tremendous pressure onto the BN government to either abolish the Dewan Negara or to reform it.
The BN government may reason the current existence of the Dewan Negara is based on the British's Westminster system, but we would definitely question such an unreasonable response by asking, "are we still under the British colonial government?" So, to hell with the Wetminster system as Malaysia has already achieved its independence more than 55 years ago.
In this case, whether to abolish it or to reform the Dewan Negara is now in the hands of both sides of the political divide. For the BN government, there are a lots of transformation programme out there pending implementation and awaiting your go ahead. This is for the entire nation and to prove yourselves worth. As for the Opposition coalition, keep on putting the pressure onto the BN government to have the entire legislature system reformed in order to reflect its effectiveness to our people and the nation, and again the public funds, its expenditures and the other allocation ought to be checked and scrutinised very often in order to prevent them from being misused or mismanaged.
