Where does the speaker's office stand?

In the chapters in this book, I believe I have demonstrated that the Speaker is not all-powerful, but neither is he without any power or authority against The Executive in his role to facilitate constructive debate between Parliamentarians and nurture good public governance and government accountability.

The Standing Orders can be a tool to enable rather than shut down Parliament’s role to scrutinise, emphasise, and advise the government. It is distressing to see, repeatedly, during this short span of time that Parliament instead is seen as an administration’s enemy to be muzzled even during times of grave crises.

The use of rules to avoid and prevent Parliament from performing its functions only allows incompetence to remain unchecked – which comes at a great cost to the government itself. This is not impossible to do, as the following example will show.

During the 2019 toxic pollution incident in Sungai Kim Kim, that sits partly in Pasir Gudang and partly in Tebrau, Hassan Abdul Karim, the MP for Pasir Gudang, filed a motion under Standing Order 18 to debate the incident and to urge the Government to declare a localised emergency or a “darurat bencana” in the area.

The motion was filed on 13 March 2019. I accepted it immediately. The debate on the matter took place the next day on 14 March, which allowed MPs to ask the relevant ministries for answers and get their assurances on the still-developing incident which affected 6000 people.

Hassan was a Government backbencher at the time, and not a Minister, which usually would have meant that he would need to put in his motion at least 24 hours in advance of the sitting.

Ordinarily, the Speaker would be expected to seek the views of the Ministers concerned beforehand (in this case, at least six) as a matter of parliamentary convention. However, strictly adhering to this convention during a developing pollution event would have been ridiculous as thousands of people were falling ill due to the toxic fumes that were spreading in the area.

The letter of the law was an insufficient replacement for urgent leadership. I count myself fortunate in having Datuk Liew and Hanipah Maidin who understood the first principles of parliamentary accountability, in this instance in an emergency. Acting in unison, we persuaded all six relevant...