IN proper democracy, Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil would have scored some political points when he publicly called out the opposition top three for not participating in the much-publicised Prime Minister’s Question and Answer (PMQ) session.

This is because most leaders of the opposition would have been politically punished or ridiculed by the public for chickening out from an opportunity to hold the prime minister accountable.

The leader of opposition in the United Kingdom Keir Starmer would be thrown out of office both by the people and his party had he been found to be consistently absent from PMQs.  

Secondly, PMQ is also crucial for any leader of the opposition to convince the public of his prime ministerial credentials.

PMQs are intent to be adversarial and only with that the public could easily compare and contrast the performance of both the prime minister and his shadow alternative.

I have previously mentioned the PMQ is about how the prime minister could play to the gallery but equally, the leader of the opposition could take advantage of that to expose a prime minister who is either poorly briefed on policies or out of his depth in answering his critics.

When he was opposition chief, the former UK prime minister Tony Blair was able to repeatedly burnish his prime ministerial credentials by harping on the politically hapless John Major.

Equally, Blair’s successor Gordon Brown also found it difficult to handle the barrage of questions and inquisitions by the charismatic and eloquent David Cameron during the weekly PMQs.   

Unfortunately, the same could not be applied to Malaysia and it epitomises the standing of parliament in our politics.

Opposition leader Hamzah Zainuddin along with the Perikatan Nasional (PN) parliamentary leader and his deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin and Abdul Hadi Awang, would not be losing any sleep over the charge made by Fahmi and it is easy to know why this is the case.

It is because the electoral success of a politician or political party in Malaysia does not rest on his or her parliamentary performance.

To put it bluntly, Malaysians do not take into account how MPs perform their duty in parliament when they go to the ballot box.

And I suspect this is a politically ugly truth that PN leaders fully understood and therefore contributed to their lackadaisical attitude towards the legislative chamber.

If parliamentary performance really matters where voters are ready to punish non-performing or absent MPs like in the case of the UK, seasoned politicians such as Muhyiddin and Hadi would have viewed their parliamentary duty in a whole different light.  

Instead of punishing non-performing MPs, they are instead rewarded with bigger majorities and electoral swings.

For instance, Hadi’s absence during parliamentary sessions has been well documented and he was rightly criticised for being one of the MPs with the lowest attendance record.

However, for all his poor record in parliament he was rewarded with a strong majority, which tells us there is little correlation between electability and parliamentary performance.

Even when he was given the floor to debate, the PAS president did not contribute to any meaningful debates but chose to peddle about toppling the government, which goes against the spirit of vote of confidence that the prime minister recently secured.

The case for Muhyiddin is even stronger and yet he was at the brink of becoming prime minister once again if not for Zahid Hamidi’s defiance.

Other than scoring an F in parliamentary attendance, Muhyiddin has actually further weakened the standing of parliament with the notorious one-day session in May 2020. The then prime minister presided over a change of speaker before the parliament was formally dissolved and most damagingly, suspending parliament through the use of emergency powers.  

Therefore, it should not be a surprise that both Muhyiddin and Hadi do not appreciate the PMQs, given how they treated parliament when they were in power.

And from a political viewpoint, there is nothing to lose for Muhyiddin and Hadi should they decide they are member of parliament in name only but not in deed.

Electors are more interested in voting for a government but fail to see how a responsible MP is intrinsically linked to good governance.

Most of all, it also epitomises how our parliament and its accompanying duties have not been wholly appreciated by the public and this is mainly due to how parliament was not independent but has served as an appendage to the executive.

And until we have a parliament that is fully independent from the executive, I suspect that Fahmi’s statement would not have the political effect he desired nor caused his opponents to lose supporters. – April 9, 2023.

* 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”.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.