Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:43
By Marc Jitab
IPOH: As one who is familiar with rules of order and decorum, last week's spectacle at the Perak state assembly had deposed Pakatan Rakyat Perak state assembly Speaker V Sivakumar bristling with anger. He told FMT that civility must be respected in the assembly whether or not “we agree with one another or what we stand for”.
“When a state assemblyperson stands and introduces a point of order, all must be silent and listen to what he or she says, even if he or she is mistaken. That he or she is wrong is not the point.
“The point is that they must be given a chance to speak. All the BN reps wanted to do was to bulldoze a whole bunch of things which is against the convention of the assembly,” said Sivakumar.
He added that the sequence of events during the sitting is rigid, orderly and must be adhered to stringently.
“The order of the meeting must be followed as in the Standing Orders. One cannot simply change the order unless it has the approval of the assemblypersons. But BN messed up the whole thing.
“A case in point: debating the royal address has to come first, then the introduction of a bill. But BN brought up the introduction of the bill first, and then debated the address.
“I brought this fact up but BN reps refused to listen to me and they didn't realise the mistake until after the sitting, when they were giving their press conference,” said Sivakumar.
So many things to do, so little time
“We asked for five days of debates. But from the agenda of the day on March 31, we could see that they wanted to finish the royal debate on the day itself.
“Only one day!... for question and answer, to pass the bill, to debate the royal address and they also wanted to appoint three subcommittees.
“I don't see the reason why there was a need to do all these things on the same day. When I was speaker, I allowed about four days to debate and to do these things.
“I would give two hours to the MB and opposition leader to speak, and at least 20 minutes each to the assemblypersons to speak.
“Usually, one and a half hours is given for question-and-answer session but not even 45 minutes was allocated this time around,” said Sivakumar.
More mixups
A key event that led to the walkout by Pakatan reps was their frustration at not being allowed to submit verbal and oral questions, and a slew of other foul-ups that only added fuel to the situation.
“I received questions from 27 assemblypersons which I submitted to the assembly's secretariat on March 15, and I asked for acknowledgement and a receipt for every document I submitted.
“The acknowledgement was even signed. The assembly secretariat, in a letter, also said we could submit questions directly via three free e-mail addressess. These were staff's e-mails.
“Seven out of 27 Pakatan assemblypersons also carbon copied their questions to these e-mail addresses, but what R Ganesan (the current Speaker) did was to recognise only these seven.
“Standing Order 22(2) clearly states that assemblypersons should submit their questions to the secretary of the assembly 14 days before the sitting during office hours. It's as clear as that and there are no other rulings regarding the matter,” said Sivakumar.
“We complied with the Standing Order but Ganesan would not relent. Again, during the assembly sitting, Ganesan said he will only be entertaining the questions of the seven assemblypersons.
“This shows very clearly that the BN government is not interested in answering our questions. They totally wanted to ignore us.”
As a matter of record
Pakatan reps' microphones were also intentionally disabled to prevent them from speaking during the assembly.
“Only what is said into the microphone will go on the Hansard. They switched off the microphones and it would seem like there was no opposition at the sitting.
“They just had the sitting to fulfil the requirement of the Perak constitution for the assembly to sit once every six months. It is purely a gimmick,” said Sivakumar.
“They made us a bunch of mutes; they were also a bunch of deafs who refused to listen to us and they blinded the public and the media when they stopped them from view the sitting,” he added.
The Hansard (an official report) is the edited verbatim report of proceedings in the assembly. So, what does the future hold for Pakatan legislators in Perak?
Sivakumar acknowledges that bringing about change through the assembly is not the way to go after last May's and last month's fiasco.
“The assembly will have to sit again in six months, and I'm sure the same thing will happen again. The only avenue is to work hard and win back the state through election,” he said.
“What we are doing now is to go down to the ground where we still have a lot of support and explain and educate the people on the shenanigans perpetrated by BN.”
No comments:
Post a Comment