Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 17/11/2015 WH Cheng Until today, we are still hearing many allegations made by politicians especially from the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition saying that Malaysia has been practicing the Westminster system in our nation’s parliamentary and governance structures. In many occasions, these BN leaders had also accused the opposition bloc in the parliament over the later’s failure to establish a shadow cabinet, by all means labelling them as non-compliance of the so-called Westminster system when opposition leaders spoke of the same against the BN government. Well, we have some questions here for the BN leaders who loudly claim the Westminster system has been long established herein Malaysia. However, we are uncertain if they are brave enough to face the facts that the Westminster system has never been in existence in our nation’s parliamentary and governance framework. Let us look at the parliamentary system of electoral,...

The upcoming 13th parliamentary seating which will soon commence its first session will see some intense debates from both sides of the political divide. Both the Barisan Nasional (BN), that is the governing coalition and Pakatan Rakyat (PR), the opposition coalition had indeed made history for themselves. BN with its reduced majority under a minority government status (based on its lesser percentage of votes received nationwide) and PR with its dramatic increased representation in the parliament which had never happened in the past. What are expected here are bill, laws and issues that are to be tabled or forwarded to the parliament would see an intense debate. To get the bill and laws through, it is by simple majority, but again, it is certain that the oppositions would not let it through that easy. On the other side, the BN members of parliament (MPs) and its government ministers would not be feeling the comfort that they have been enjoying decades ago. The parliamentary su...

In the first place, why are we now focusing on a two-party system to be implemented in our nation? Didn't we all realize that our nation has been adopting a multi-party democratic system where we are supposed to allow any political parties to contest in the general elections, to offer their respective manifestos for the people to decide and to convince our people that the said political party would be the people's best choice of representation. We supposed we have been overly focusing on one thing, to take down the current Barisan Nasional (BN) government which has been ruling our nation for more than 55 years now. Yes, with more than 55 years of power abuse, corruptions, mismanagement of public funds and racist politics, enough is enough but it does not mean that the choice of our people should be limited to only a two-party system? It looks like everyone of us has really forgotten what we are really looking for, that is democracy and social justice. In pursuing for a d...