Summer break is over, and publicly elected members of parliament from all parties gathered this morning for the 14th Dewan Rakyat (lower parliament) sitting, the first since the game-changing May 9th General Election put Pakatan Harapan in power.
They wouldn’t be sitting long.
Considering it was the first time for many of the now-opposition MPs to sit on the minority side of the aisle, many watched with eager eyes as to how it would all go down.
There was a fair bit of frenzy that met each MP as they made their way inside the building for the 10am session, including former Prime Minister Najib Razak, currently out on bail.
Remember when he told reporters that he was “unemployed?” Guess he forgot that residents in Pahang state’s Pekan area elected him MP to represent their interests. Easily forgettable, we know.
Key Barisan Nasional members like MPs Hishammuddin Hussein, a defense minister under the former government, and Tajuddin Abdul Rahman, arrived early and smiling for the dozens of cameras that greeted them.
What kind of first day would this be, reporters asked Tajuddin. He told them that now that he was an opposition MP, he would finally be asking a lot of questions.
“We won’t be an opposition like them,” he said with a laugh. That was true. The part about asking a lot of questions? Not so much.
Instead, after new Speaker of Parliament Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof was sworn into office, they jeered and then they walked out en masse.
Maintaining that Mohamad Ariff’s qualifications were not their point of contention, the opposition says that their bone to pick is due to lack of transparency in the appointment process. Namely, that a candidate must be nominated 14 days before they are appointed.
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad just looked on with amusement.
When Dewan Rakyat Secretary Roosme Hamzah told the assembled lawmakers that he had received a letter suggesting Mohamad Ariff’s appointment on July 2, opposition members became vocal, maintaining that they had seen no such appointment letter.
Their solution to that alleged breach of procedure, they said, was for parliament to be suspended for 14 days while the appointment letter was resubmitted. Alrighty then.
Three BN men, however, remained firmly in their seats, with MPs Khairy Jamaluddin, Anifah Aman and Rozman Isli, sitting firmly in their seats waiting for the storm to pass.
Khairy was spotted in the lead-up to the walkout telling fellow members to not play into the stunt and urging them to stay seated. His words appeared to only have an effect on two compatriots.
Reader, if you are out there searching for the photo that best describes what standing out on a limb-slash-forgetting to switch your alarm to daylight savings looks like – here you go:
Finding yourself the only Wu-Tang fan at a Jimmy Buffet concert must be difficult, but for KJ, making statements that resonate best with people who didn’t actually vote for BN seem to be his new MO.
Sunday night, he called the antics surrounding Mohamad Apandi’s initial appointment to the Umno Supreme Council “disappointing.” Many saw a conflict of interest, as he was the country’s former Attorney General during Najib’s tenure. After the onslaught of criticism, Apandi’s initial “honor” to serve turned to a rejection of the appointment upon further consideration.
Labelling it embarrassing, KJ took it a step further saying at this point, the debacle was “amateur hour.”
Zing.
Let’s not forget that only last week, he bemoaned the fact that the party’s leaders seemed more concerned with sticking to the status quo that lost them the election, than figuring out how to make themselves a more appealing party.
Calling out his fellow party members, he wondered where their heads were at, continuing to play the race card by taking issue over the appointment of a non-Malay Attorney General, and telling his followers that they risked becoming irrelevant in the next 10 to 15 years.
The tweets have proved to be wildly popular on Twitter, with even his adversaries commending his gumption, a voice of dissent within the iron-clad BN ethos of towing the party line.
However, what will it mean for the former minister? He’s maintained that he has no intention of leaving his party, saying Umno is his house, and he wants to fix it.
A commendable attitude, but when you’re one of the last cognizant velociraptors at Jurassic Park, you’re fighting to survive long enough to see the next election.
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