What I had predicted last week is coming to pass – that the UMNO/BN government would flout parliamentary tradition and conventions to stack all parliamentary questions about Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s RM2.6 billion “donation” in the current 25-day budget meeting of Parliament and answer them in “one go”, not allowing the subject to be pursued further even if MPs are completely dissatisfied with a “tai chi” non-answer.

This was my reaction to the bad, undesirable and unacceptable parliamentary precedent set by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Azalina Othman, on the first day of the current meeting on Oct. 19, refusing to answer questions on the RM2.6 billion “donation” issue by DAP MPs Lim Guan Eng (Bagan) and Lim Lip Eng (Segambut) on the ground that the government will answer questions about the RM2.6 billion “donation” and other relations questions on an undetermined date of the present meeting.

Deploring such a new-fangled practice as undermining an important principle of parliamentary control over the Executive, I asked whether this would mean that the question would be answered on the last day of the 25-day parliamentary meeting on Dec. 3, allowing MPs no room or opportunity to pursue the question if the answer was totally unsatisfactory?

Furthermore, whether the “bad, undesirable and unacceptable” parliamentary practice would be “set a disastrous precedent for Ministers to evade and avoid answering parliamentary questions posed by Members of Parliament by pushing the questions to the very last day with totally unsatisfactory and unacceptable answers”? Read the rest of this entry »