PETALING JAYA: A PKR MP has urged the opposition to consider using its Budget 2021 vote as a “bargaining chip” to make the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government implement reforms.
Subang MP Wong Chen said the opposition’s budget vote was the only “silver bullet” it had to test the legitimacy of the government, adding that this should not be given away freely.
“Parliamentary convention demands that if a government is defeated in a money bill, it has no choice but to resign. The budget vote is the mother of all money bills. If the prime minister loses this vote, he has to resign and his government will collapse.
“Therefore, we can’t simply surrender this silver bullet to the prime minister for free. Instead, we must consider using this as an all-important bargaining chip, to obtain some much-needed reforms to save democracy,” he said in a Facebook post today.
Wong Chen said there was ample time for demands to be made in exchange for the opposition’s vote and for Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to fulfil them since the final budget vote will only take place on Dec 10.
He said Malaysian politics always had a surprise in store, adding that Umno could still retract its support for the budget despite reiterating that it will back Muhyiddin.
“On the very top of my list of democratic reforms is to give an unfettered right to the opposition to table a vote of no-confidence motion in Parliament. I am sure most reform-minded Umno MPs like Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah will be supportive of such a demand.
“This reform will allow Parliament to check the legitimacy of the prime minister and to prevent a dictatorship.”
He said another demand the opposition should make is for the Cabinet to sign an undertaking to pass the Parliamentary Services Act in the March 2021 meeting, to make Parliament independent from the executive both financially and administratively.
“As an opening gambit to demonstrate sincerity on the part of the government, I urge the Cabinet to present a full budget briefing to all opposition MPs on Nov 2 when Parliament resumes.
“After that, let the ‘budget vote for reform’ negotiations start, for the sake of the people, democracy and the nation,” he said.
