ON August 6, 2020 Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz stood up in the Dewan Rakyat to  deliver the winding-up speech – the last item on the Order Paper for the day – for the debate on the royal address by the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong.

It was already 5.55pm, but Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Parliament) Takiyuddin Hassan had earlier in the day moved that the House not be adjourned until the last minister had taken a turn at answering during the debate on the royal address.

Forty-five minutes into his speech, Zafrul was asked by his predecessor Lim Guan Eng about the RM3.9 million 1MDB settlement agreement with Goldman Sachs:

“Ada keputusan Kabinet (atau) tidak tentang penyelesaian sebanyak RM3.9 bilion, sebanyak RM2.5 bilion cash, sebanyak RM1.4 bilion dalam bentuk jaminan. Adakah dapat kelulusan daripada Kabinet?”

When Zafrul suggested that it was approved by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government, Lim disagreed. Lim then exchanged words with Arau MP Shahidan Kassim before Speaker Azhar Azizan Harun stepped in and told them both to please sit down.

“Sila duduk, sila duduk. Saya rasa ini keputusan Kementerian Kewangan dan semestinya akan dibawa di Kabinet.”

Former Dewan Rakyat speaker Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof must have read the Hansard before chastising his successor Azhar for being partisan when carrying out his duties.

“The speaker is a speaker of the whole house. For heaven’s sake. Someone has got to tell him,” Ariff said.

“He or she has got to be impartial. You cannot protect a minister. You cannot suggest an answer to the minister,” Ariff added. https://www.themalaysianinsight.com/s/326576

But Azhar should not need someone to tell him. In an episode of The Art of the Matter, a series of videos presented by Azhar, or Art Harun as he is better known, he cited the power abuses by the former speaker before the PH government came into power.

He said “there were times when questions were asked (of) the ministers and they were not answered. Or if answered, the answers were unsatisfactorily given and the speaker did not do anything.”

“That is a clear abuse or failure to undertake his functions (as speaker),” asserted Azhar.

So when Ariff, who once taught at the faculty of law of Universiti Malaya, where Azhar read his law, said that the speaker must be be impartial, it was not a case of a former speaker chiding his successor. 

Nor was it the teacher chiding the pupil. It is the teacher reminding the pupil.

After all, It was the pupil who himself who once said that “the office of a speaker must be filled by a person of integrity, who is fiercely independent and who knows the procedure of the Parliament like the back of his hand. He must be able to control all the MPs properly so that we could have a discussion and a very civil but robust debate of matters of public importance.” – July 11, 2021.

* Hafiz Hassan reads the Malaysian Insight.