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DEWAN DISPATCHES: Fury over Gobind’s ‘apology’ & Speaker’s magnanimity mutates into Kit’s melancholy

by: Azmi Anshar
DEWAN RAKYAT, July 1, 2008

After yesterday’s histrionic ejection of MP for Puchong Gobind Singh Deo and walkout of the full Opposition complement over a sticky procedural feud transfixed in the annals of colonialist limbo, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia restarted this afternoon’s session by revealing to MPs that Gobind had apologised in a private meeting during lunch hour over his petulant altercation with the Chair that forced his removal.

In his autocratically gravelly baritone, Pandikar Amin went into a monologue reviewing yesterday’s rowdy session but he was all immersed in magnanimity. Deciding that Gobind’s two-day suspension was more than adequate and taking into consideration his rookie lawmaker status, the Speaker declined to entertain BN backbenchers’ demands that the MP for Puchong be referred to the House Rights and Privileges Committee for disciplinary punishment, although he ruled that Gobind’s outburst was indeed outlandish and contemptuous to the House.

To recap: During Q&A Pandikar Amin red-carded Gobind out of the Dewan Rakyat and inflicted a two-day suspension for relentlessly arguing to segue a mundane line of supplementary questioning over housing issues into a full-blown debate over Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy charge, death threats and holing up in a the Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. Having been ejected and in a hissy fit, Gobind huffed, "who is the Speaker?" in drumming his right to speak in the House. Gobind also vowed to enter the Dewan Rakyat in defiance of the suspension.

“I consider this matter with Puchong over,” the Speaker then declared. Not so, it would seem. The Speaker’s “magnanimity” may be a short-lived gesture. Soon after the Speaker made the disclosure, a seething Gobind, notified jarringly of his “apology” by SMS news alert, vehemently denied any form of repentance to the Speaker. Gobind asseverated that his meeting was to clarify the expiry of his suspension, which was tomorrow. "I never apologised," he bluntly asserted.

Now there is an “embellishment” of the “apologia.” Whatever it was, the Speaker’s magnanimity didn’t bode well with the backbenchers, who had “smelled blood” and yearned to rejoice at seeing Gobind’s head on the Rights and Privileges committee’s sacrificial altar; especially Bung Moktar Radin (BN-Kinabatangan) who let fly his outrage at Pandikar Amin’s ruling with considerable decibel of infuriation.

With a raised arm, the animated Bung Moktar reminded the House that if nothing was done to discipline Gobind, there was nothing to stop other MPs from treating the Speaker contemptuously. "What is to stop others from doing what he did?" he lashed out at the Speaker. “I absolutely do not agree with you,” he continued with his lashing. “His action was tantamount to stepping on our heads. I am not satisfied…I am not satisfied”.

The equally animated Datuk Tajuddin Abdul Rahman (BN-Pasir Salak), who was Bung Moktar’s tag-team partner in demanding for Gobind’s head, indignantly pointed to Gobind’s searing statements in the lobby and to the media. “This clearly embarrassed all of us and it is shameful," he beseeched.

Where the other MPs were agitating distressingly, Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi (BN-Batu Pahat), as always, was cooly epigrammatic in his appraisal of the flare-up. “This is a precedent that is contemptuous to the House and the Speaker. (Gobind) proclaimed that he was chosen by the people, and therefore the people were also insulted by his ejection.”

Assessing the turbulence as if he was acutely positioned in the eye of the hurricane, Pandikar Amin posited that he understood the backbenchers’ grave reservations with his decision but he too was not satisfied, especially with some MPs’ ludicrous posturing, alluding to Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Barat) whom he chided for refusing to sit when he was ordered to do so. But to reach the goal of a “First World” parliament, the Speaker pronounced that there had to be some compromises in the process, and that was why he accepted Gobind’s apology in good faith and that the whole episode was a lesson learnt by everyone.

Reaching back to his political milieu, Pandikar Amin did not resist this rejoinder to Gobind’s bravado defense of his ideological beliefs. “Yes, he vowed to come to Parliament but only to see me privately. So he kept that part of his promise,” he said with a thin smile. "It is up to the House and members to decide if they want to take action against him. I have done my part and I am satisfied with his explanation.”

The Speaker’s pronouncement somehow prodded the usually reserved Mohamed Aziz (BN-Sri Gading) to fire a volley of his own scepticism: “You can commit a grave mistake but if you seek an apology, you can be forgiven. Is this your intention?”

“It is not intended like that,” Pandikar Amin gently snapped back. “What I am asking from members is that they think first before they speak. Instill some self-discipline and humility when you say your piece.”

And then this crowning statement over all that the Speaker survey and his annoyance with MPs who won’t stick to simple rules. “I do not want to make history that I made this ruling based on my sentiment. If all of you follow the rules and be self-disciplined, there won’t be any of this ruckus.”

With that sermonic postulation, the Speaker didn’t make anyone happy, neither the Barisan backbenchers nor the Pakatan Rakyat bloc. In a quirky manner, Pandikar Amin has designed himself to be only righteous person in a House flailing in this whole madcap episode. But Tajuddin, sensing that the Speaker might remain too buoyant on his magnanimous high chair, quickly interjected and said: “Can we continue?” to the relieved ayes of backbenchers. Before anyone forgot, there still was the debate on the Mid-term Review of the 9th Malaysia Plan.

And in living up with his immaculate timing, Kit, whose turn it was to debate on the Mid-Term Review, shot the final word on the over-dramatisation of the last 24 hours. “I wonder if Kinabatangan, who was accused of being a gangster, will apologise for dismantling the barricades that banned the Press from entering the lobby. Not that we disapprove because we too support the removal of the barricades.”

The Speaker quickly interjected and told Kit to continue with the Mid-Term Review debate but that wasn’t the end of Kit’s sensibilities over how the House had discharged itself since it reconvened in April. After comprehensively ripping into the Barisan Government’s “tottering” missteps since the watershed March 8 polls, including a reprise of his “world’s richest unemployed man” slapshot against Khairy Jamaludin (BN-Rembau) and venerating his “political tsunami” cliché, and tearing away at Government promises to reform the judiciary and police force while snubbing many backbencher interruptions, Kit unexpectedly uttered a very introspective assessment of how he perceives the House now after cutting down several notches the bloviating concept of Malaysia’s “First World” parliament.

“I notice lately that a certain nastiness had crept into our parliamentary proceedings,” he said in a rather enigmatically hush tone, and with permission, in English.

The Speaker was quick to cast a light on Kit’s unexpected melancholia. “Sounds like you are accusing…?”

“No, no….it’s just a general observation,” Kit remarked back. “It has never happened before but I hope I’m wrong, I really do. (Parliament) is a forum to be trusted, a people’s forum where you can debate on anything. It is special to sit on a seat where you can dispense justice. My sentiments may be inaccurate on the conditions to be a First World parliament but we can take the first steps…”