CONSTITUTIONAL amendments to prohibit MPs from switching parties were passed in the lower house on Thursday.

The moves has been universally praised and no doubt the government will be quick to claim credit for the changes to the law.

The opposition, bereft of ideas and achievements since the ousting of Pakatan Harapan in 2020, will tell voters it had pressed for such a law via the inking of an MOU with the prime minister.

The fact remains that the amendments owe their existence largely because of the political upheaval created during the mass party defections in the infamous Sheraton Move.

The politicians have insisted that the changes to the constitution were necessary to restore voter confidence. 

In reality, will the new law prevent another Sheraton Move?

On the surface, the bill clearly staes that Independent and party MPs who parties will have to vacate their seats.

This makes Umno MPs likelier to stay loyal to their party so that Bersatu will not see its parliamentary seats increase beyond the 13 seats it won in the 2018 general election.

It is worth noting that even with the defections, the Sheraton Move was still a gamble which could have backfired.

It is safe to conclude that then Bersatu chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad had accepted into his party Umno MPs Hamzah Zainuddin, Mustapa Mohamed and Mas Ermieyati  to bolster the party’s numbers so that it could dominate the coalition, thereby weakening Anwar Ibrahim’s claim to succeed the prime minister in his office.

Even if the anti-party hopping law had existed at the time, then prime minister Dr Mahathir could have deregistered the embattled Umno at that time, therefore turning Umno MPs into a group of independents to freely join Bersatu.

This is because the law does not mandate MPs to resign their seats if their parties are deregistered.

After undergoing a review by a select committee, the bill also allows MPs who are sacked to retain their seats. This means that MPs can disobey the parliamentary whip and wait to be sacked so that they can join a new party.

As you may recall, Mohd Azmin Ali and his gang of 10 MPs did not leave PKR at the onset of the Sheraton Move. They merely voiced their support for Dr Mahathir to serve a full term as the prime minister instead of handing over the reins to Anwar as pledged.

He and Zuraida Kamaruddin were consequently sacked by PKR for betraying “the party’s stand in the matter pertaining to the position of the prime minister”.

Azmin and the other MPs only resigned from the party after the sacking of the two. As a result, the pair would not have been affected by the anti-party hopping law as it stands.

I am not advocating for a harsher law at the cost of the MP’s right to freedom of association.

However, the law would not have stopped the Sheraton Move and it seems unlikely to prevent another such event.

By fixating on the law as the magic bullet for the democratic backslide in 2020, politicians, especially those in PH, have clearly failed to reflect on the root cause of the Sheraton Move.

If Dr Mahathir and Bersatu had continued to flirt with Umno and PAS with the aim of dislodging PH and Anwar, the Sheraton Move was bound to happen one way or another.

Instead of a law which I suspect was mostly drafted to encourage voter turnout in the general election, it is time we tackle the institutional deficit that encourages party hopping.

Legislating for a separation of the attorney-general and public prosecutor’s powers, a more independent parliament and equal funding for all MPs will be more useful in preventing another coup by defection. – July 31, 2022.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.