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DEWAN DISPATCHES: When you goad the Speaker like you goad a referee, you get red-carded!

by: Azmi Anshar
DEWAN RAKYAT, June 30, 2008

Gobind Singh Deo shouldn’t fret too much about getting thrown out of the Dewan Rakyat this morning by the Speaker and inflicted with a two-day suspension for arguing relentlessly with Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia. It’s just like being red-carded for two yellow cards during an intensely competitive football match. It’s a two-match ban for the DAP MP for Puchong who can soon get back into the game either on Wednesday or Thursday.

Gobind, like other MPs who may regard verbal jousting with rivals on the other side of the political divide or the House autocracy as a divine right, have to know the Speaker is correct even when he errs, just like a football referee who gets blind-sided in blowing his whistle, only to adjudge the foul wrongly.

Of course, it’s easier to complain about a bad refereeing decision after you get ejected but when you engage the match official like a zombie pugilist, the only ones you hurt is yourself and your team mates. But the House is not a football match though metaphorically, it resembles a free-for-all wrestling orgy.

That said, Gobind had been dealt with severely by a pedantic martinet who regards continuously shrill vocal retaliation – similar to that of a discomfiting pneumatic drill boring away into his cavities – as violation of House Standing Orders. Pandikar Amin is steadily constructing a steely superstructure persona whom MPs simply can’t take for granted anymore if they think about taking him on in future clashes. He won’t brook for any debating trickery or gimmickry nor would he give MPs slack when it comes to his absolutist interpretation of the House rules of engagement.

Gobind can still groan and gripe for the bien-pensants of his tribe until the cows are prep for slaughter but before you hear more grumblings, you can be sure that there is not a single Opposition MP in the house who wouldn’t give his or her right arm to be thrown out of the House for standing up to your scruples, even if it means betting against the House. Gobind’s de facto mentors, Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor), and dad, Karpal Singh (DAP), can recall many war stories on what it means to be thrown out of the House, personally and politically.

But is getting thrown out for refusing to heed the Speaker’s order to sit down worth the hassle? And stubbornly goading the Speaker to take action against him when tact and stealth would be far more effective?

The MP in Gobind knew much, much better but the political slugger in him just could not resist the irresistible opportunity: during the supplementary question on the move to scrap the build-and-sale concept in the housing industry, Gobind went along with the flow until he abruptly steered off course by interpolating the issue of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sensational sodomy charge and his current holing up inside the Turkish Embassy to ward off a “death threat.”

Gobind did gamely try to link the two discrete issues by drawing on a meeting he had with residents in his constituency and how the on-going problem with abandoned schemes had eroded the people's confidence in the Government. “For example, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had to seek refuge in a foreign embassy for his safety," he deadpanned. The reaction was like earning the wrath of the BN backbenchers.

BN MPs hyperventilated into a rupture at the mere mention of Anwar’s name but it was Datuk Tajuddin Abdul Rahman (BN-Pasir Salak), an Umno MP with a known beef against Anwar, who indignantly pointed out the question’s irrelevancy to the original question, which prompted the Speaker to rule in Tajuddin’s favour. (The Speaker made a similar ruling last week when DAP MPs tried to raise the issue of the barricades forbidding the Press from entering the Parliament lobby to catch Ministers or MPs for a story).

Pandikar Amin sensed a dogfight that he, as sole arbiter of good Housekeeping, could never retreat from and tried dissuading Gobind from pursuing the Anwar Ibrahim cause by reminding him and the other MPs to behave and confined supplementary questions only to matters raised in the original question. “I urge you not to test my patience by raising irrelevant matters,” he said. “During question and answer time, questions must be kept short and contain only facts. Do not bring up points which are not related to the issue being discussed.”

Pandikar Amin may be naïve to think that his succinct ruling was reasonable enough to deflate Gobind from hounding the Anwar issue but there’s too much of the Karpal DNA in him: Gobind zoomed into the meeting with the house buyers whose project had been abandoned but whatever cohesion the debate had soon disintegrated after the two ripped into a heated exchange:

Gobind: “Listen first, and then only you decide. Don’t interfere. Can you please listen to my question first? It is a very short question.”

Pandikar Amin: "You sit down...asked him to sit down, or else I will exercise my power against you."

Gobind: “Go ahead. Use your power. I was just trying to raise a point here.”

Pandikar Amin: “I want Puchong to leave this meeting for two days. Sergeants-at-Arms, carry out your duty and escort Puchong out of the House."

When the officer approached Gobind, he reacted as a petulant child would: he slammed his document on his table and walked out.

In the lobby, an irate Gobind expressed unhappiness with the Speaker’s decision to the Press but in a varied spin. “I do not understand why I was disallowed to pose my question which is simple. I just want to ask a question for my people in Puchong on abandoned houses. I wanted to find out about the development in a ministerial meeting two months ago on this issue. If a people's representative cannot ask question, who can?" he said. Gobind also complained he was very disappointed with the Speaker, claiming the treatment against him was “completely unfair, undemocratic, unjust and unheard of.” He vowed to continue coming to the parliament tomorrow. “If the Speaker wants to chase me away again, he can do so for 10 times.”

Kit too played along with the tenuous hyperbole that a question about the housing industry can recoil into an issue about Anwar Ibrahim. “Gobind should not have been suspended,” Kit rapped, “because he was doing his job. This is unprecedented and it was completely uncalled for. Gobind was asking a supplementary question directly related to the original question but was not allowed to do so, unlike when BN MPs were allowed to beat about the bush.”

For being a rookie MP, this has been Gobind's baptism of fire, an infliction of a long-held tradition in the name of drawing first blood or instigating a brawl your seniors or brethrens expect of you. In following dad’s indelible footsteps, the torch has been passed.