“A PARLIAMENT of birds,” exclaimed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Senator Liew Chin Tong described the one-day sitting last Monday as akin to the decapitation of Parliament. And Lim Kit Siang, a senior lawmaker with a penchant for hyperbole, decried it as “the darkest hour of Malaysia’s parliamentary history”.

Some are rightly infuriated by Malaysia’s Parliament because unlike most others around the world, ours has failed to conduct a proper session, let alone test the confidence in the prime minister via a motion. But this has never been a Parliament with the finest tradition of holding the government to account. Therefore, suddenly demanding that it get its act together and scrutinise the government in such a dire period, when it has failed to do so during normal times, is a fool’s errand.

That the PM allowed only the Agong’s speech on the agenda of the single-day sitting left Malaysians with no doubt that he is avoiding scrutiny and reinforces the argument that he is afraid of his majority being challenged. Ironically, it is the sole prerogative of the leader of the House – by virtue of being PM – to decide when and for how many days Parliament meets, a power that he has exercised unashamedly for his own gains.

Parliament will always be at the behest of the executive as long as the PM continues to decide when and how it should sit. Political observers understand that the one-day sitting was merely to fulfil the constitutional requirement for a recess not to exceed six months. Unfortunately, that was the only arsenal Parliament could deploy against the overarching executive, and the only obligation the PM had to meet to be deemed accountable by Parliament. A one-day sitting is possible because the Standing Orders, which govern Parliament, will it in the first place.

Even if the PM had been benevolent enough to allow a longer session as sought by the opposition, he could still control proceedings by overwhelming them with government business. The wretched clause of “on every sitting day, government business shall have precedence over private members’ business” in the Standing Orders effectively guarantees that any no-confidence motion by the opposition would not be debated on the floor. Parliament entertains such a vote only when all government business is completed, and the government can always stack the agenda with its own bills or motions.

Deplorable it may be, but perfectly legal. Hence, the only plausible scenario where a no-confidence motion sees the light of day is when the government is tabling it – if it is foolish enough to defeat itself in Parliament.

It is often said that the independence of Parliament is sacrosanct. But that principle has been rendered almost void since the 1992 abolition of the Parliamentary Services Act, which granted Parliament the right, among others, to decide its own affairs. Without the act, Parliament is robbed of the right to hire its own staff, and they are to be sourced from the Public Service Department. Worst of all, the act’s abolition puts Parliament’s funding totally under the purview of the Prime Minister’s Department. Never mind independence when Parliament can’t even pay its bills without depending on the executive’s coffers.

If that’s not enough, the executive’s dominance was on full display, yet again, two weeks ago, when the Dewan Rakyat secretary was abruptly replaced less than three months into the job, a move widely reported as punishment for accepting the opposition’s no-confidence motion. It is no surprise that his successor is from the PM’s Department.

As the one-day sitting ended in predictably meek fashion, my mind harked back to 2015, when Parliament failed miserably to check and hold to account Najib Razak’s premiership, which was mired in the 1Malaysia Development Bhd scandal. A no-confidence motion was also submitted at the time, but not tabled because of the same reasons explained above.

The public outrage against Najib then is no different from the disgust for Muhyiddin Yassin’s controversial backdoor government now. The anger in 2015 subsided when three years later, Pakatan Harapan was elected government on reform vows including the explicit promise to “restore the dignity of Parliament”. Yet, nothing has substantially changed in Parliament between 2015 and today, and its failure to reform should serve as an indictment of the ill-fated coalition. Now, PH is made to suffer again on Parliament’s uneven floor because of its own hubris and negligence by not making the institution more independent, democratic and fair to the opposition.

If the opposition had a say on when Parliament should meet, as is the case elsewhere, Muhyiddin would have to drag his feet to the House to face scrutiny of his policies, and most of all, a no-confidence vote. If there were specific sitting days to prioritise private members’ business, also as done overseas, our politicians would think twice about engineering a “Sheraton Move”, given the ever-looming prospect of a challenge to their majority. Finally, a Parliament functioning with zero interference from the executive would not have countenanced a single-day sitting when the nation is sandwiched between the twin peaks of a pandemic and a political crisis.

Parliament definitely failed Malaysians this time, and its deficiencies being laid bare might offer a way forward for civil society groups or future MPs to truly “restore the dignity of Parliament”. But mind you, the rot began much earlier, and no current lawmaker can plead their innocence. – May 25, 2020.

* 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.