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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s parliament on Thursday (Nov 5) announced new health protocols for the ongoing meeting, including limiting sessions to four hours per day and a limit of 80 members of parliament (MP) who can be present at the Dewan Rakyat at any one time.
In a statement, spokesman Azhar Azizan Harun said that the alarming increase in COVID-19 cases has forced the authorities to take various measures to ensure that the last parliamentary session of the year can continue.
He explained that a meeting was held on Wednesday, attended by the whip bosses representing all the parties. Final decisions were made based on advice from the National Security Council and the Health Ministry, he said.
“The first thing would be to set the schedule for the daily sessions to begin at 10 in the morning and end at 2 in the afternoon. Two more days could be added to this session, which would be December 16 and 17, if necessary.
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“The attendance of members of Parliament, including the presentation of the Budget 2021 on Friday, is limited to just 80 people at any one time, where 41 members will be from the government while 39 will be from the opposition and independent factions,” he said. .
The statement said it was up to individual political parties to determine which of their MPs would be present. There are 222 deputies in total.
“For the block voting process, the bell will ring for two minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute consolidation period. Then the bell will ring again for two minutes. Just for this process, all deputies can be in the House of Parliament. “
Following the announcement, Jelutong MP RSN Rayer asked the speaker to justify the allocation of seats to lawmakers from both sides of the political divide.
“To be clear, we would like to know why the allocation was not the same as 40 for each side.” he said.
The speaker replied that the government was given a larger allocation of seats because it had a majority.
He added that the initial suggestion was that two deputies representing each party be present at the debates. But he had lobbied for 100 deputies to be allowed in. The final decision was to accommodate 80 of them, the speaker said.
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The speaker’s statement also said that despite the shorter daily sitting hours, MPs still have enough time to consider the 2021 budget.
In addition, the statement said that the question and answer sessions for Mondays and Wednesdays would be limited to one hour, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays there will be 55 minutes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5 minutes will be allocated to question time for ministers.
These new rules came after the parliament session that began on November 2 was shortened to just three hours a day, after Upper House staff and a media staff tested positive for COVID-19.
Minister of the Prime Minister’s Department (Parliament and Law) Takiyuddin Hassan. (File photo: Bernama)
The de facto law minister, Takiyuddin Hassan, had explained that he moved the motion under section 12 (1) of the Standing Order on the advice of the Ministry of Health that prolonging the hours in the confined spaces of the parliamentary debating hall was risky for MPs.
The 2021 budget will be presented on Friday and the scheduled debate will end on December 10.
After recording 1,032 cases on Wednesday, Malaysia now has 35,425 positive COVID-19 cases. Of this, 10,339 were active cases. To date, the country has recorded 271 deaths.
