In times of crisis, parliament must effectively check and scrutinise the government

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In times of crisis, like today’s coronavirus widespread in our nation, the parliament as the highest institution in this country must ensure our people and the nation’s well-being are being prioritised by the government of the day.

In this case, even if the coronavirus is yet to be under control and the movement control order (MCO) is being implemented, the period and time of the parliamentary sittings should not be reduced no matter what it takes in order to ensure the sitting government is properly checked and scrutinised in whatever it undertakes to ensure public interests are maintained, corruption, power abuse and mismanagement of funds can be prevented.

It is the utmost responsibilities of the sitting government to ensure the smooth proceedings of the parliament by ensuring all member of parliament of their safety and security while the proceedings are ongoing while the crisis is being tackled.

Today, based on our observation on the rebel government, they are obviously disappointing in all their daily undertakings. We noted that ministers are wasting their time on front liners and wasting much needed government assets in order to publicise their so-called visits from one place to another. Ministers are giving out their rulings but ended up retracting them. Ministers giving contradicting messages to the public. Ministers and deputy ministers themselves and their relatives openly arrogantly defying the MCO without any fear of being arrested or prosecuted, while ordinary folks who have to undergo the harshest punishment ever if they were to defy the MCO.

Then a minister claimed by consuming warm water, the patient will be able the rid of the coronavirus, later on made a conference call claiming that he had dealt and spoken to about 500 nations about our preventive and curbing measures. A senior minister who made a wrong statement to the public but later blamed it to a CNA journalist over her “misquote” or “misreport” of his statement, later go on to warn all newspapers and news portals that stern actions will be taken against them for any “misreport” if they are found again.

All these happened because the Perikatan Nasional (PN) rebel government has been arrogant, left unchecked since its successful coup against the then Pakatan Harapan (PH) government on February 2020. After PN’s coup which toppled the PH from Putrajaya, the rebel government then went on to postponed the parliamentary sitting which was originally scheduled on 9 March 2020 to 18 May 2020 fearing the uncertainties of the numbers of MPs it claimed to have earlier.

The postponement of the scheduled parliamentary sitting was also said to be the best strategy to prevent a no-confidence vote from being mooted against the prime minister and his rebel government, then followed by the postponement of the annual general assembly and party elections of Bersatu from April 2020 to June 2020, which saw its party president Muhyiddin Yasin being challenged by his deputy president Muhkriz Mahathir.

Muhyiddin took advantage of the coronavirus crisis and the MCO implementation nationwide to delay the parliamentary proceedings and withheld the Bersatu party elections because he needed more time to negotiate with all MPs to affirm their support before the next sitting and to hold further discussions with all Bersatu division chairmen nationwide to garner more support to ensure he gets to keep his party presidency.

During the MCO period, the rebel government is also seen to be expediting the termination of the current heads of government-linked-companies (GLCs), government-linked-investment-companies (GLICs) and other agencies and replacing these incumbents with all MPs from Perikatan Nasional which further gave rise to concerns on whether the BN-era corruption and power abuse which cost our nation’s billions of ringgit in losses will repeat and plundering will resume based on the fact that the much tainted Umno and GPS who were once in the BN coalition are now back in charge as members of the rebel government.

As such, the parliament ought to continue its roles in providing checks and balance on this rebel government who had since, taken some advantages during this crisis by creating wonders for themselves while we all are being lockdown nationwide. The parliament must ensure that whatever undertakings made by the rebel government must be closely scrutinised in the name of public interests instead of letting them go on with their “happiest” moment during this period.

Any attempt by the rebel government to avoid or reduce the timing of the parliamentary proceedings should be viewed as irresponsible and an attempt to disregard parliamentary democracy and imposing their own set of rules onto our people and the entire nation.

The rebel government which is also consist of those who were in their worst ever track records during their previous tenure in the BN-era ought to be closely monitored by all the parliamentary select committees appointed last year.

The parliamentary select committees appointed by the parliament from 2018 until 2019 were Special Select Committee For Consideration Of Bills; Special Select Committee On Budget; Special Select Committee On Defence And Home Affairs; Special Select Committee On Gender Equality And Family Development; Special Select Committee On States And Federal Relations; Special Select Committee On Major Public Appointments; Special Select Committee On Election; Special Select Committee On Human Rights And Constitutional Affairs; Special Select Committee On International Relations And Trade; Special Select Committee On Science, Innovation And Environment, asides the Public Accounts Committee.

The Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives in the Parliament) must ensure all these parliamentary select committees continue their oversight commitments to check on the various cabinet ministries, subsidiary agencies, GLCs, and GLICs to ensure proper management, accountability, transparency and competency of these institutions.

What make matters worsts today are the appointment of all PN MPs to head all those agencies, GLCs, GLICs which has been seen as an unhealthy move by the rebel government to gain support to ensure its survival.

From now on, there will be more politicians doing or handling business transactions which could spell the return of massive corruption, power abuse and mismanagement in the next couple of months if the parliament does not gear up its efforts to ensure its strength and independence in checking and scrutinizing the rebel government.

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