An eventful month for reforms

COMMENT | On July 25, the Dewan Negara passed the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2019 with the requisite two-thirds majority. This comes after the Dewan Rakyat similarly passed the same bill on July 16.

With this, the Federal Constitution will be amended to lower the voting age and the eligible age to stand for elections to 18.

The bill will also allow the Election Commission to implement automatic registration of voters. The EC will be looking at ways to implement this, while at the same time, undertake the task of cleaning up the electoral roll.

These constitutional amendments may be the most significant constitutional amendments in terms of the impact on the sheer number of Malaysians.

Yet the passage of the bill was not the only activity at the second meeting of the second session of the 14th Parliament.

This session also saw members of the Dewan Rakyat and the Dewan Negara giving their approval to the motions to compel MPs and senators to declare their assets. The assets would then be published in a website maintained by the MACC.

The approval of these motions, tabled separately at both Houses, comes after MPs who are ministers and deputy ministers, as well as backbenchers, declared their assets and had the same published online...