KUCHING, Feb 28: The current political impasse ought to be solved by the dissolution of Parliament, not another sitting, says Santubong MP Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar.
Wan Junaidi opined that a special parliamentary sitting can only assess the support of prime minister candidacy from the three or four pacts of elected representatives where he predicted that there will not be any conclusive outcome.
“The figures might still be the same with those that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah had obtained yesterday.
“What I fear is the longer we allow the impasse to subsist, the longer the period for ‘horse trading or possibility of ‘vote’ buying’ to happen; from now until March 2.
“In my opinion, the Prime Minister’s (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) decision to bring it to the Parliament to decide is not correct,” he said in a press statement today.
Wan Junaidi is responding to the decision made by the Interim Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, yesterday that a special Dewan Rakyat sitting will be convened on March 2, to decide on next prime minister.
Since no pact has the majority within the context of Article 43 of the Federal Constitution, the ultimate answer will be the dissolution of the Parliament, said Wan Junaidi.
Wan Junaidi believed that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong was doing the right thing, by taking inputs from all the MPs to gauge the majority, where there was none. In such a case, for the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to seek the opinion of the Council of the Conference of Rulers before exercising the latter’s authority under Article 40 to dissolve Parliament is appropriate.
He insisted that another parliamentary sitting will not solve the present impasse but creating more mess.
“In fact, it is creating a mess now and attracting the thing that should be avoid, which is the possibility of vote-buying and serious haggling.
“Rakyat will ultimately be the losers. There will be no end to politicking,” said Wan Junaidi. — DayakDaily
