Are those the ghosts of Dr Mahathir & Anwar in Parliament?

Are those the ghosts of Dr Mahathir & Anwar in Parliament?

DEWAN RAKYAT, 2008/05/29
After 16 torrid days and at the conclusion of its First Meeting of the First Session of 12th Parliament, the Dewan Rakyat quivered, rocked and steadied as never before. Its dominion is now brimming with a new look and outlook, festering with verve and panache as MPs exchanged barbs and insults, animalistic epithets, porky abbreviations and incendiary ideas, some over the top and some intellectually stimulating while preserving their lustre, cool and sanity.

Democracy, while sagging on the streets under the weight of public expectations, is cooking like a simmering steamboat of exotic stew inside the House, thanks to the infusion of new blood in both BN backbenchers and Opposition MPs, and a regeneration of venerable veterans and old guards, having had to put a long leash on the young Turks and zealous pretenders.

But has not the People’s Hall always been like that for decades, especially after every general election, you might beseech? Not quite and not like the one an enthralled public had been privileged to observe - hyperbole theatrics, kitschy showmanship, exasperating one-upmanship and yet deft manoeuvres, eloquent passion and depth of understanding. And it’s descriptive of both sides of the fragile political divide.

Some MPs dominated debates while a couple were simply a dominant presence, some were domineering but their bullying tactics quickly floundered, others hogged interjections on the excuse of seeking clarifications but ended up dishing mindless sermons, one MP refused to speak after the two-minute time limit imposed was deemed a grievous insult to his well-prepared thesis.

Other MPs relished the idea of hounding Ministers for the slightest slips and oversights, or hounding fellow hounders until the outcome degenerated into a freefall free-for-all that their cacophony of vocal embellishments equalled annoyingly to that of the din cackled by the thousands of crows at Bangsar’s Lucky Garden during dusk.

There were some who presented thoughtful oratorical essays that beg for canonisation for their sublime use of tone, pace, cogency and urgency. There were tricksters whose debating acumen were limited by their intellectual dwarfishness, constraining themselves to insolent one or two-letter fencing in trying to counteract the efficacy of sound and solid arguments.

Then there were the few, the rookies, who launched into the pit zealously, then forced to trammel their voice to the level of eagerness before switching to combativeness once their presence turned into transponders on slow days but lightning rods during electrifying moments. Then there are the handful who laboured to fine-tune their speech perfectly with the savvy amount of pertinently current issues, only to flame out after being unable to resist the temptation to plunge into low-rent name calling and scorn of merciless rivals that soon drowned their original motives.

When Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz quipped on the day he was made Cabinet Minister in charge of Parliamentary Affairs that the new Dewan Rakyat sitting is going to be “one hell of a Parliament with a bigger Opposition”, he could not have described it more presciently but certainly he may not have fully expected that with a new generation of Opposition MPs comes a new whim to destabilise the Barisan hegemony, especially its precarious 140-82 Lower House majority.

Now, in no particular order, the defining episodes that made the First Meeting of the First Session of 12th Parliament such a gregariously momentous outing:

*Block voting rattles the House: Coming on suddenly yesterday, some would described it as cathartically democratic while others see it as a rude awakening for the slumbering BN MPs. Whatever it was, it shook the MPs into action never experienced before for most reps. An extraordinary demand for block voting to pass an innocuous Supplementary Supply Bill for funding against the routine ayes and nays was reluctantly approved by the Deputy Speaker. This is where MPs have to stand and be accounted for, one by one, in what may have been a devilishly delicious Pakatan Rakyat ruse to test the BN majority’s steadfastness. With a mix of alacrity and anxiety, MPs, especially from the BN, were hustled up from all corners to enter the House, from their cups of tea and snacks and even the senate meeting next door, to emphatically vote 92–60 to allow the bill to go through unblemished. Otherwise, many national sporting events would have been scuppered.

*Gale from the Land Below The Wind: The BN majority was garroted by threads of Sabah BN MPs “munificence”, using their perceived role as kingmakers to deliver subtle threats of defections while presenting a shopping list of projects and funding that should be handed out by the BN Government to compensate for the years of what the Sabahans hold as neglect and apathy. The Sabahans’ artifice, a fortuitous moment to strike the iron while it is hot, was launched by Datuk Anifah Aman (BN-Kimanis) days after the start of the meeting on April 30 and followed up by Datuk Ghapur Salleh (BN-Kalabakan), following the fervent speculation that now was the best prospect for the Pakatan Rakyat to strike at the Empire, especially when its ranks were deemed vulnerable. Depending on whom does the trash talk (it revolved around PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Azmin Ali (PKR-Gombak), Pakatan Rakyat leaders kept digging at the vulnerability of the BN’s majority, bragging that they possessed the numbers that oscillated between 25 and 34 seats in the Opposition’s countenance. The BN scrambled to audit the numbers to counterclaim Anwar and Azmin’s trash talk though it was believed that other “sweet numbers” were tabled to appease the Sabahans whose strident voices amplified by the day. It also showed that the March 8 general election results were still political luggage that cannot be easily unloaded.

*Is that Dr Mahathir’s apparition in the House?: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (Ex BN-Kubang Pasu) was nowhere near Parliament House on May 20 but his presence haunted the House after he shockingly declared a day earlier that he was leaving Umno to protest alleged transgressions committed by the president and Prime Minister. Question after question, altercation after altercation and interjection after interjection, MPs did not utter a single peep on Dr Mahathir’s unbearable departure, so unsettled were they with the impingement of this one-man juggernaut on their political fortunes. Outside the House, Umno MPs quickly rallied behind Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi after he summoned them for a closed-door meeting during House break to measure the cause and effect of Dr Mahathir’s undoing. His son, Mukhriz (BN-Jerlun), decided that staying put in Umno to do his father’s bidding was strategic but other Umno MPs and Ministers didn’t hold their breath to launch one stinging rebuke after another against their former mentor, slamming him as being disloyal and holding the party hostage.

*Is that Anwar Ibrahim’s apparition in the House?: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (ex BN-Permatang Pauh) too was nowhere near Parliament House, just like his reviled former mentor, but his presence haunted the House after he declared (bragged was more like it) that he was able to pull a considerable number of BN MPs into Pakatan Rakyat and henceforth topple the BN Government. However, Anwar won’t “activate” his “sleepers”, the 25 to 34 BN MPs his people insisted were ready to jump ship. MPs – whether they liked it or not, or whether they realised it or not – debated under his invisible presence. Khairy Jamaluddin (BN-Rembau) alluded to Anwar in his maiden speech though not in a flattering tone while Datuk Tajuddin Abdul Rahman (BN-Pasir Salak) barbed that Anwar was involved in corrupt practices and instrumental in getting him sacked from Umno. Defending Anwar, Azmin Ali shot back, insinuating that Tajuddin spent RM6 million to get elected as an Umno division chairman. Tajuddin claimed he was maligned by Anwar, desperate to become Prime Minister, conspired with a Menteri Besar to victimise him. There is no escaping Anwar Ibrahim, still political guru of consolidation and re-invention, even when he was haunting Parliament House.

*Enduring the deadly bite of Parliament’s Great White Shark: Was there a time that Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor) didn’t institute a timorous effect on crucial House bills, motions, debates and interjections while firing away ripostes of facetious hyperbole? The way he scents blood from a “wounded” or unsuspecting Minister or MP with his bait-and-switch tactic to score big political points (and material for his incendiary blog) was a jolting reminder of that elongated elasmobranch marine fish, especially the ones “large, voracious and dangerous to humans”. His most derisive hyperbole yet? Bestowing Khairy Jamaluddin with the sobriquet “the world’s richest unemployed man” and taking on all menacing quarters while he thundered on the mismanagement/misappropriation of funds in the construction of the Port Klang Free Zone. Kit found it fit to infuriate Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia after the blog he authored severely criticised Deputy Speaker Datuk Ronald Kiandee for disallowing his motion to amend a motion of thanks for the royal address to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Sabah’s illegal immigrant problem, besides accusing Kiandee of violating parliamentary conventions, practices and precedents. The Speaker warned Kit to make corrections to his blog piece or face the Rights and Privileges Committee for possible disciplinary action but until now, the Shark remains defiant.

*Is he really the Prince of Darkness?: Yes, if accounts in most blogs uncharitable and unflattering to Khairy Jamaluddin (BN-Rembau) is thoroughly tabulated, just as he is perhaps the most maligned politician after Dr Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim. However, Khairy arguably launched the most explosively puissant maiden speech in the House, remembered vividly for the diatribe he slapped on Anwar for the surreptitious misrepresentation of petrol prices Anwar supposedly checked when he was Deputy Prime Minister/Finance Minister. Khairy sealed further his reputation by coining the acronym Projek Khinzir Raksasa (Giant Pig Project) on two allusions: PKR the party for allowing a controversial Selangor pig farm project and Anwar’s pioneering of the word ‘khinzir’ in his speeches. The Prime Minister’s son-in-law took on all comers with the equivalent of Sid Pistol in his defiant and snarling punk days. As many as two dozen Opposition MPs, including Kit and Karpal Singh (DAP-Bukit Gelugor), tried to derail Khairy’s fusillades with missiles of Point of Orders, but the young man hung on to his message as he stubbornly refused to give way to all clarifications. His detractors, in and out of the House, are just waiting for him to make a slip while they sharpen their long knives, but for that one electrifying moment, a star was born.


*In the Parliament House’s Neutral Zone, anything goes: The 80 x 20 metre long expanse called the Parliament lobby is a bubbling marketplace for democratic diversions, from ISA detainees’ wives holding court to activist groups reproaching MPs who dented their sensibilities. The Hindraf’s cause was celebrated in the form of a small birthday party for a detainee's daughter while 30 wheel-chaired persons chided and taunted Datuk Ibrahim Ali (IND) for his politically incorrect rejoinder of Karpal Singh’s (DAP-Bukit Jelutong) wheelchair incapacitation. Ibrahim refused to accede to the demand to apologise to Karpal and walked off in a hissy fit after the confrontation transformed into mob heckling. Most MPs are delighted with the lobby’s “Neutral Zone” porousness for democratic activism but Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia wasn’t amused with the liberal use (or misuse, in his mind) of the lobby for political gains, threatening to stop future “dalliances” by writing to all party leaders to curb members.