Impossible to have re-demarcation as two-thirds of MPs must agree - Pandikar

KUALA LUMPUR – Under the current political atmosphere, no consensus could be made between the ruling and opposition coalitions and thus, it is impossible to pass a bill to amend the Constitution and re-demarcate constituencies in the current parliament session, said Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia.

"Under the current atmosphere, the Opposition still refuses to accept the election result, how are they going to cooperate with BN MPs and pass the bill to amend the Federal Constitution?"

He said that to re-demarcate and increase the number of parliamentary seats, it involves Constitutional amendments and the bill must be supported by at least two-thirds of MPs to be passed. Based on the current atmosphere, it is impossible for MPs of the ruling and opposition to reach a consensus to get it done.

The government may re-demarcate constituencies every eight years and the last re-demarcation was made in 2003.

Pandikar also pointed out that the number of opposition MPs have increased after the 2008 general election.

Unfair comparison?

The atmosphere in the Dewan Rakyat meetings have many times turned intense over the past five years and Pandikar called it the start of maturity for Malaysian democracy.

"Some people asked why the quality of our Parliament is lacking behind European Parliaments and such kind of comparison is not fair. European Parliaments 50 years ago were just like our Parliament today. The 13th Parliament is the country's first step towards democracy maturity," he said.

He said that it is still too early to say that the 13th Parliament would be more chaotic then the previous term, as predicted by many media, as the Parliament was just formed and many MPs have not yet demonstrated their strength, and he has not yet fathomed their personalities.

"The media predicted that PKR Pandan MP (Rafizi Ramli) would overturn the Parliament but after watching him on TV, I think he is very eloquent and stable. I am optimistic about the performance of the new Parliament," he said.

As for MPs of the previous term, he said that in fact, only a small number of them had always gone too far and excluding them, other MPs had performed quite well.

Sin Chew