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Don’t blame opposition for defeat of security motion in Malaysia parliament, says DAP chief

Don’t blame opposition for defeat of security motion in Malaysia parliament, says DAP chief

Anthony Loke waves to party delegates after being appointed as Democratic Action Party's new secretary-general on Mar 20, 2022. (Photo: Facebook/Anthony Loke Siew Fook)

KUALA LUMPUR: The Opposition bloc should not be blamed for the defeat of a motion for a security provision tabled in parliament on Wednesday (Mar 23), said Democratic Action Party (DAP) leader Anthony Loke.

The newly appointed secretary-general said that the defeat of the motion should not be seen as the failure of the opposition bloc to fulfil its obligations under the bipartisan Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) reached with the government last year. 

Speaking in parliament on Thursday, Mr Loke said that  he did not expect the government to lose the vote to extend the enforcement of the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (SOSMA) as they still held the majority in the august house. 

The motion tabled by Home Minister Hamzah Zainuddin to extend the enforcement of powers to detain suspects for up to 28 days without trial for another five years beginning from Jul 31 of this year,  was defeated after it was put to a bloc vote.

“The government has 114 or 115 parliamentarians on its side, but the number that attended yesterday was only 84. We had 86. 30 did not attend.

“Don’t blame us for the failure to pass this motion. It failed because there were 30 parliamentarians from the government block who were not in attendance,” Mr Loke said. 

The Seremban MP said this during the debate on another bill  to amend the Constitution (Amendment) Act 2019.

The Lower House currently has 220 MPs.

Mr Loke also said that the motion's defeat showed that parliament was not a rubber stamp and proved that not all motions brought up by the government could be approved. 

He, however, said that by not supporting the motion did not mean that the opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition had breached the MOU signed between them and the government on Sep 13 last year.

He said that according to the MOU, the opposition would agree to support or abstain from voting on any government bills only after it had been negotiated and agreed upon by them.

Mr Loke said the SOSMA amendment bill was not negotiated with the opposition.

He also did not think that with the defeat of the motion it meant that Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s government had lost support in parliament. 

“We did not agree and rejected the SOSMA proposal but does this mean that the prime minister has lost support? The answer is no because our obligation was to approve the Budget 2022, which we did. So the question of the motion of trust in the Prime Minister does not arise at all,” he said.

MOU HAD NOT BEEN BREACHED: PKR 

PH and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) communications director Fahmi Fadzil also said  the defeat of the motion did not mean a loss of faith in the government.

In a Tweet, the Lembah Pantai MP said that the motion was not included in the matters negotiated in the MOU between the opposition and the government.

Several key politicians, especially those from the United Malay National Organisations (UMNO) had cited the defeat of the security motion as evidence that  the MOU had been violated and thus that there was a need to dissolve the parliament and call for  elections.

“That is their agenda. We hold on to the principle that there are some policies that we do not agree with and SOSMA is one of them. But there are some policies we agree with.

“We want to ensure that the government is stable until a time where we can conduct elections. We are committed to this principle. We will support the anti-hoping bill fully,” said Mr Loke.  

According to the MOU, the parliament cannot be dissolved before Jul 31 of this year.

Among those who claimed that the MOU had been breached were UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and UMNO deputy president Mohamed Hasan who have been vocal in calling for snap elections in the face of Barisan Nasional’s convincing wins during the Melaka polls in November last year and the Johor polls on Mar 12.

On Wednesday, parliament speaker Azhar Azizan Harun announced that the bloc voting saw 84 MPs voting for and 86 against, while 50 MPs were absent.

The Star reported that Mr Azhar had also disqualified at least three MPs from voting, as they had entered the hall late for the bloc vote process.

It also quoted Mr Hamzah as saying that it was not the first time that the government had sought to extend the powers of detention under subsection 4(5) of SOSMA.

He said that it was first enforced on Jul 31, 2012 and was first extended on Jul 31 2017, for five years until Jul 31 of this year.

Mr Hamzah also said the preventive laws to detain suspects for such a long period was still necessary.

He said that a total of 3,717 suspects had been detained under SOSMA between 2016 and January this year, with 126 suspects charged for terrorism and 552 charged for smuggling migrants.

 

Source: CNA/rv(ih)

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