[ad_1]
PETALING JAYA: Chief Minister Datuk Seri Azmin Ali will not be referred to Parliament’s rights and privileges committee as he was not misleading Dewan Rakyat, says Datuk Azhar Azizan Harun.
Dewan Rakyat’s spokesman also said that he had informed Lim Guan Eng of his decision, who had tabled a motion to refer Azmin, the minister of International Trade and Industry, to the parliamentary committee on rights and privileges.
“Based on the facts provided, I find that Azmin had not misled Dewan Rakyat and also attached the reasons for my decision and why I decided.
“There was a Pakatan Harapan Cabinet meeting on September 5, 2018, as stated by Azmin, which agreed to ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) but no date was given.
“If there was a subsequent decision by the then Pakatan cabinet, MP Lim from Bagan is at liberty to insist on his motion and write to me on the matter,” Azhar said when contacted.
Azhar was asked to confirm Azmin’s assistant Lim Wei Urn’s claim that he had decided not to refer Azmin to the rights and privileges committee as requested by former Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.
“The Bagan (Lim) MP’s motion to refer Azmin to the rights and privileges committee is political in nature. Lim is trying to divert the public from the problems facing the DAP.
“The Chief Minister had emphasized that the Pakatan Harapan Cabinet on September 5, 2018 agreed that Malaysia ratify the CPTPP but did not declare a specific time period for ratification.
“It is understood that Spokesperson Dewan Rakyat had rejected Lim’s motion based on the facts given to the Spokesperson for consideration.
“Bagan must take responsibility to focus on efforts to curb the Covid-19 pandemic. It must stop the narrow policy that will mean the loss of the people and the country,” said Lim Wei Urn, special officer of the Gombak MP’s parliament. . Azmin.
On August 4, Azmin and Lim clashed at the Dewan Rakyat when the former revealed that the Pakatan Cabinet had endorsed the ratification of the free trade agreement on September 5, 2018, after the previous Barisan government signed the CPTPP. on March 8, 2018.
On August 28, Lim claimed that Azmin had misled Dewan Rakyat and said that he would file a motion to refer him to the committee.
Lim claimed that Azmin had been selective about the facts and that the last decision of the Pakatan Cabinet while in power was not to ratify the agreement.
The CPTPP is a renamed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) that collapsed after the United States withdrew from it in January 2017 under the presidency of Donald Trump.
The other signatories are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Japan took the initiative to save the agreement and, together with Australia, organized several meetings and later renamed it CPTPP.
With the United States out of the picture, Malaysia and other like-minded partners took the opportunity to suspend some of the provisions agreed in the TPPA.
Unlike other free trade agreements that Malaysia has signed, the TPPA is the first to go beyond the traditional ones.
Rather than focusing solely on goods, services and investments, it also included chapters on public procurement (GP), Investor-State Dispute Settlement Mechanism (ISDS), state-owned companies, environment, intellectual property rights (IPR), politics labor and competition. .
These provisions were seen as controversial, and critics argued that countries like Malaysia did not get a good deal.
[ad_2]
