DEWAN RAKYAT: Gobind Singh Deo shouldn’t fret too much about getting thrown out of the Dewan Rakyat this morning by the Speaker and inflicted with a two-day suspension for arguing relentlessly with Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia. It’s just like being red-carded for two yellow cards during an intensely competitive football match. It’s a two-match ban for the DAP MP for Puchong who can soon get back into the game either on Wednesday or Thursday.
Gobind, like other MPs who may regard verbal jousting with rivals on the other side of the political divide or the House autocracy as a divine right, have to know the Speaker is correct even when he errs, just like a football referee who gets caught in a blowing his whistle, only to adjudge the foul wrongly.
Of course, it’s easier to complain about a bad refereeing decision after you get ejected but when you engage the match official like a zombie pugilist, the only ones you hurt is yourself and your team mates. But the House is not a football match though metaphorically, it resembles a free-for-all wrestling orgy.
That said, Gobind had been dealt with severely by a pedantic martinet who regards continuously shrill vocal retaliation – similar to that of a discomfiting pneumatic drill boring away into his cavities – as violation of House Standing Orders. Pandikar Amin is steadily constructing a steely superstructure persona whom MPs simply can’t take for granted anymore if they think about taking him on in future clashes. He won’t brook for any debating trickery or gimmickry nor would he give MPs slack when it comes to his absolutist interpretation of the House rules of engagement.
Gobind can still groan and gripe for the bien-pensants of his tribe until the cows are prep for slaughter but before you hear more grumblings, you can be sure that there is not a single Opposition MP in the house who wouldn’t give his or her right arm to be thrown out of the House for standing up to your scruples, even if it means betting against the House. Gobind’s de facto mentors, Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor), and dad, Karpal Singh (DAP), can recall many war stories on what it means to be thrown out of the House, personally and politically.
But is getting thrown out for refusing to heed the Speaker’s order to sit down worth the hassle? And stubbornly goading the Speaker to take action against him when tact and stealth would be far more effective?
The MP in Gobind knew much, much better but the political slugger in him just could not resist the irresistible opportunity: during the supplementary question on the move to scrap the build-and-sale concept in the housing industry, Gobind went along with the flow until he abruptly steered off course by interpolating the issue of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sensational sodomy charge and his current holing up inside the Turkish Embassy to ward off a “death threat.”
Gobind did gamely try to link the two discrete issues by drawing on a meeting he had with residents in his constituency and how the on-going problem with abandoned schemes had eroded the people's confidence in the Government. “For example, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had to seek refuge in a foreign embassy for his safety," he deadpanned. The reaction was like earning the wrath of the BN backbenchers.
BN MPs hyperventilated into a rupture at the mere mention of Anwar’s name but it was Datuk Tajuddin Abdul Rahman (BN-Pasir Salak), an Umno MP with a known beef against Anwar, who indignantly pointed out the question’s irrelevancy to the original question, which prompted the Speaker to rule in Tajuddin’s favour. (The Speaker made a similar ruling last week when DAP MPs tried to raise the issue of the barricades forbidding the Press from entering the Parliament lobby to catch Ministers or MPs for a story).
Pandikar Amin sensed a dogfight that he, as sole arbiter of good Housekeeping, could never retreat from and tried dissuading Gobind from pursuing the Anwar Ibrahim cause by reminding him and the other MPs to behave and confined supplementary questions only to matters raised in the original question. “I urge you not to test my patience by raising irrelevant matters,” he said. “During question and answer time, questions must be kept short and contain only facts. Do not bring up points which are not related to the issue being discussed.”
Pandikar Amin may be naïve to think that his succinct ruling was reasonable enough to deflate Gobind from hounding the Anwar issue but there’s too much of the Karpal DNA in him: Gobind zoomed into the meeting with the house buyers whose project had been abandoned but whatever cohesion the debate had soon disintegrated after the two ripped into a heated exchange:
Gobind: “Listen first, and then only you decide. Don’t interfere. Can you please listen to my question first? It is a very short question.”
Pandikar Amin: "You sit down...asked him to sit down, or else I will exercise my power against you."
Gobind: “Go ahead. Use your power. I was just trying to raise a point here.”
Pandikar Amin: “I want Puchong to leave this meeting for two days. Sergeants-at-Arms, carry out your duty and escort Puchong out of the House."
When the officer approached Gobind, he reacted as a petulant child would: he slammed his document on his table and walked out.
In the lobby, an irate Gobind expressed unhappiness with the Speaker’s decision to the Press but in a varied spin. “I do not understand why I was disallowed to pose my question which is simple. I just want to ask a question for my people in Puchong on abandoned houses. I wanted to find out about the development in a ministerial meeting two months ago on this issue. If a people's representative cannot ask question, who can?" he said. Gobind also complained he was very disappointed with the Speaker, claiming the treatment against him was “completely unfair, undemocratic, unjust and unheard of.” He vowed to continue coming to the parliament tomorrow. “If the Speaker wants to chase me away again, he can do so for 10 times.”
Kit too played along with the tenuous hyperbole that a question about the housing industry can recoil into an issue about Anwar Ibrahim. “Gobind should not have been suspended,” Kit rapped, “because he was doing his job. This is unprecedented and it was completely uncalled for. Gobind was asking a supplementary question directly related to the original question but was not allowed to do so, unlike when BN MPs were allowed to beat about the bush.”
For being a rookie MP, this has been Gobind baptism of fire, an infliction of a long-held tradition in the name of drawing first blood or instigating a brawl your seniors or brethrens expect of you. In following dad’s indelible footsteps, the torch has been passed.
How very ‘British’ of the Opposition MPs to walk out on Najib
DEWAN RAKYAT, June 30, 2008: First Gobind Singh Deo (DAP-Puchong) was ordered out of the House by the House Speaker for stridently quibbling over relevancy to tenuously tie Anwar Ibrahim with a supplementary question about housing, then his tribe of Oppositionists, led by his mentors Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor) and his father Karpal Singh (DAP-Bukit Gelugor), stage crafted a wholesale walkout of DAP, PKR and Pas MPs to discompose the House over a procedural feud whether the Datuk Seri Najib Razak can speak or not.
While Gobind was fuming outside the House for his unceremonious ejection, the full complement of the Opposition MPs decided to join him in equal fulmination – perhaps to get back at House and Barisan Nasional for red-carding Gobind – by protesting the Speaker’s decision to permit the Deputy Prime Minister to make a ministerial statement on the Mid-Term Review of the 9th Malaysia Plan tabled by the Prime Minister on June 26.
So what’s the big beef about such a mundane procedure? It would seem that it had something to do with Malaysia’s former colonial master’s ways and means on House conduct and propriety. At best, the walkout was could be pictured as niggardly pedantic and at worst, it bordered on boorish formalism.
Although Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia invoked Standing Order 14 (1) (i) greenlighting Najib to table his ministerial statement, the Opposition MPs wasn’t buying into it, resolutely contending that any correction or addition should be brought forth by the PM. Najib counterargued that he was tabling the ministerial statement because he seconded the tabling of the Mid-Term Review.
It would seem the procedure approved by the Speaker had a contentious consequence – it defiled Westminster and Commonwealth conventions, making Najib’s ministerial statement improper. The whole walkout was for that reasoning?
Kit and Karpal were quick and attentive to alert the Speaker that Najib’s initiative was “hostile” to British propriety. In good form, Kit produced an overblown criticism of the Speaker’s approval – that it tantamount to “reckless disregard of parliamentary practices, procedures and rules.” Najib, he countered, was allowed to misuse the Standing Order.
"He should have made all the remarks he wanted to when he was seconding the Mid-Term Review. Not now. It should have been done immediately. He is trying to have a second bit at the cherry. This is a gross abuse of parliamentary standing orders," Kit charged. “It sets a most dangerous precedent that the government front-benchers can abuse the standing orders at their whim and fancy. It is being perverted to accommodate Najib.”
Kit went on to contend that the proper subject for ministerial statement would be the Government’s position on Anwar Ibrahim, who at the time of this writing, had left the Turkish Embassy after holing up overnight as a precaution against death threat.
The Speaker, unperturbedly, invoked Standing Orders 43 and 99 to make his decision final, challenging dissatisfied MPs to table motions to contest it. In his blog, Kit indicated that substantive motions will be submitted to review the Speaker’s alleged misuse of Standing Orders and also to steer attention to Gobind’s ejection.
Soon after, Mahfuz Omar (PAS-Pokok Sena) launched a leading question to Pandikar Amin, asking the Speaker if he was admitting that the PM had erred when he tabled the MTR on Thursday. "Are you saying that the PM's speech was incomplete?" he said but Pandikar Amin refused to take the bait of Mahfuz’s fishing expedition.
But from there on, all of Pandikar Amin’s efforts to instruct Najib to start addressing the House fell into a vortex of Opposition whirlpool where at one stage, Dr Dzulkifli Ahmad (Pas-Kuala Selangor) told the Speaker he must offer a good reason for allowing Najib floor time. "You have not told us a reason for allowing this. Give us one good reason," beseeched Dr Dzulkifli.
Pandikar Amin ignored the Opposition’s escalating entreaty and still repeated his call that Najib proceed, only for Karpal to interfere as he quoted the British House of Commons convention and practice that if anyone should be allowed to make a ministerial statement, it should be the PM. "That is the House of Commons practise. Should not the Prime Minister be making the statement?" Karpal asked.
It was probably exasperating for Pandikar Amin to sound like a broken vinyl record but he duly repeated his earlier statement that he was using his discretion to allow Najib floor time. "I look at the conventions in Commonwealth countries when I make my decisions. Not just one country. I have to think of everyone's interest," he sighed.
Sensing finally that the Speaker, putting his authoritative weight on the issue, was not going to budge, the Opposition finally relented and waited for the Speaker to instruct Najib to speak. However, when Najib rose to begin his address, Kit, like the great tribal chief that he is, signalled his braves to walk out of the House, muttering that it was pointless to stay inside the House.
Predictably, the BN backbenchers reacted to the affront with loud jeers but the Pakatan Rakyat MPs refuse to be drawn into a reaction and walked out silently, smiling and grinning at the contrived procedural fuss they had triggered.
Azmi Anshar
NST Online
01/07/08
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