In her Sunday Star parliamentary roundup “Lim stopped by Standing Orders” today, reporter Elizabeth Looi quoted Deputy Speaker Datuk Ronald Kiandee as confessing that he did not know whether I had spoken the truth in Parliament on Thursday when objecting to his decision to disallow my amendment to the Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the three-decade long illegal immigrant problem in Sabah.
I had said that Kiandee had violated all parliamentary conventions, practices and precedents in Commonwealth Parliaments as well as the Malaysian Parliament in ruling my amendment motion as “irrelevant”, pointing out that I had previously amended a Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address in the Dewan Rakyat and which was debated and voted upon, though rejected.
Kiandee made the confession when interviewed by Sunday Star for the article, as evident in the following:
Kiandee defended the decision and said it was not in any way politically influenced. He said he would not know if Lim was telling the truth when the latter said he had been allowed to table an amendment to a motion of thanks previously.
As Deputy Speaker, Kiandee should not have acted out of ignorance, as it could be no justification for violating established parliamentary conventions, practices and precedents in Commonwealth Parliaments and the Malaysian Parliament itself, which could easily be checked whether what I had said was true.
I was not “stopped by Standing Orders” but by Kiandee who misused and abused the Standing Orders.
I had amended such a Motion of Thanks for the Royal Address in the Dewan Rakyat on 12th October 1982 and it was voted and rejected on 13th October 1982!
Clearly, Kiandee owes a public apology to the people of Sabah, Malaysia and Parliament.
Is Kiandee prepared to publicly apologise for such ignorance resulting in an atrociously bad and wrong ruling going against all parliamentary conventions, practices and precedents in the Commonwealth and in Malaysia itself as well as dashing the hopes of Sabahans and Malaysians who had dared to dream of the end of the 30-year Sabah nightmare of illegal immigrants?