KUALA LUMPUR - THE opposition Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) may table a motion of no confidence against the Prime Minister when Parliament is convened on April 29, according to a senior PAS leader.
And it appears the opposition Islamic party is counting on disgruntled members of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition for the motion to succeed.
But lawmakers from fellow opposition parties are more cautious about the move.
A senior member of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) described such a motion as a 'serious matter' that needed to be studied, while another from Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) said his party would look into whether it was 'timely'.
PAS vice-president Husam Musa said many MPs were unhappy with the BN-led federal government following its dismal performance in the March 8 poll.
This was why his Islamist party wanted a change in the country's leadership, Datuk Husam was quoted as saying in The Star newspaper yesterday.
In the general election, the opposition won 82 of the 222 Parliament seats.
PAS won 23 while its opposition allies, the DAP and PKR, secured 28 and 23 seats respectively.
Even if all opposition MPs were to support the motion, they would be 30 votes short of passing it. So the opposition must rely on the possibility that some disgruntled BN MPs may absent themselves from the vote or, worse yet, defect to the other side.
Constitutional law expert Shad Faruqi said that, under the law, the king has two options once Parliament approves a motion of no confidence against a prime minister.
One is for the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, as Malaysia's constitutional monarch is known, to appoint a new prime minister from among the MPs who have the support of the majority in Parliament.
'The other option is for the king to dissolve the Parliament and call for fresh elections,' the lecturer at the Mara University of Technology told The Straits Times.
A no-confidence motion has never been tabled in Malaysia.
Chow Kum Hor
The Straits Times, Singapore
Malaysian Bar
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