COMMENT | Budget vote: The people would always prefer to fight

COMMENT | We were all given a crash course on the legislative process of Parliament last week. The dramatic turn of events taught us the meaning of the words “bloc voting”, “policy stage” and “committee stage”.

“Bloc voting” means every parliamentarian gets to cast a vote and this vote shall be recorded, as opposed to what happened – “voice vote” – where only “aye” or “nay” were broadly heard. “Policy stage” is the first part of passing a bill, and this will be followed by the “committee stage”, which is more centred on details rather than the broad generalities of the “policy stage”.

We have also learned that the committee stage would have the same voting options as the policy stage, and after another round of debates, we get to vote again. In Anwar Ibrahim’s words, the “policy stage” was only the “first round”.

After this round, there will be the final stage called the “third reading”, where matters addressed are more formal than substantive, before passing it to the Dewan Negara to run through the procedures in its respective manner...