As the Pakatan Harapan candidate for Port Dickson parliamentary by-election Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has just said, on his return to Parliament, Tun Mahathir Mohamad would continue to focus on his Prime Ministerial duties while he would focus on parliamentary reforms.
There is no doubt that parliamentary reforms in Malaysia is long overdue.
The last 13th Parliament became an international joke and charade as Members of Parliament were not allowed to submit questions or to debate the 1MDB scandal, when the whole world was aware of its monstrous criminality and moral turpitude.
In fact, I was suspended twice for six months each in the 13th Parliament, basically for wanting to get to the bottom of the 1MDB scandal.
In the last few days of the previous Parliament, I became a parliamentary “ghost” when the Speaker and the two Deputy Speakers refused to “see” me although I was physically in front of them in the Dewan Rakyat!
One of the parliamentary reforms Pakatan Harapan has initiated in the 14th Parliament is to appoint an Opposition MP as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
As a result, Barisan Nasional MP Ronald Kiandee, the former Deputy Speaker, was appointed as Chairman of the PAC as the UMNO President and Opposition Leader, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi had declined the post.
Before Parliament adjourned its August meeting, it unanimously passed a motion which directed the PAC to “conduct again a detailed investigation on the embezzlement of monies and the scandal with regard to 1MDB and its related companies in order to restore the dignity of the Dewan Rakyat; and that all related information should be made public”.
Kiandee should recuse himself from PAC investigation into 1MDB scandal as he was Deputy Speaker of previous Parliament banning questions and debate on 1MDB scandal, undermining the dignity of the Malaysian Parliament and the nation, thereby raising conflict-of-interest questions.
Kiandee can continue as PAC Chairman but in all fairness, he should sit out in the re-opening of investigations into the 1MDB scandal, and let the PAC Deputy Chairman Wong Kah Woh (Ipoh Timor) to chair the investigations into the 1MDB scandal.
(Speech by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang at the Port Dickson by-election kopitiam ceramah at DS Kopitiam in Lukut on Friday, 5th October 2018 at 10.30 am)