KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 19 – Refusal to listen to Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia got two DAP MPs booted out from Parliament at Dewan Rakyat here today. DAP’s Segambut Member of Parliament Lim Lip Eng was booted out from the Dewan Rakyat today after refusing to accept the decision by Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia to reject his motion.
The decision was made by a clearly irate Pandikar after Lim continued to dispute the decision to reject the emergency motion. Meanwhile, Pandikar said all decisions made by him, whether in chambers or in the Dewan, could not be retracted. Hence he opined that the actions of the MPs to dispute his decision was merely to delay the ongoing Parliament sittings. He said he was being a speaker for seven years.
While he said everybody should understand the standing orders for the meeting. He said he do not see any other reason other than those trying to delay the current sittings. He stressed this before asking Lim to leave. In the meantime, Lim had also raised Standing Orders 18(1) after Pandikar had rejected the motion regarding the increase in toll prices.
Besides that, the prompted DAP’s Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo was also to stand and defend Lim while also causing his ejection as well. Following a shouting match with Pandikar, Gobind was booted out after refusing to withdraw his statement that apparently questioned the integrity of the Speaker.
Meanwhile Lim and Gobind maintained that the Speaker erred by kicking them out of Parliament today. Gobind said the Speaker’s reason for dismissing the motion raised by the Segambut MP was “questionable”. Gobind hold a press conference in the Parliament lobby here today said Lim had rejected his motion with the reason that Seputeh MP’s (Teresa Kok) motion will go first but he later dismissed her motion as well .
“I stood up to defend the honesty of the House. I just wanted the Speaker to clarify why the motions were rejected and his reasons for it as well as putting it on the record. I did not call him dishonest personally, I said the Speaker should not be dishonest. I just wanted him to accept his reasons for rejecting their motions,” said Gobind.
“I just wanted to protect the Speaker to ensure nobody had the view that the House was dishonest. It is not about how angry the Speaker was and with all due respect he seemed a little angry today. He has to control his anger and get things right. We will accept if he gave us his reasons and the record showed that,” he said.
“It was a shame that Pandikar kicked both of them out. It’s the first day of Parliament and this has happened, he should not kick us out before hearing us out. We have a right to speak out and if he listened to us, he might have changed his mind,” said Gobind called on Pandikar to consider what happened in Parliament today.
Gobind said he was respect the Speaker and his powers but he should hear us out before making his decisions but the speaker must also respect us and we must be given the space to explain ourselves. He said the duo did not know how long they were suspended for. Meanwhile, Pandikar had also called for a minister to move a motion against the two to bar them between six months to one year.
