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Home / Dewan Dispatches : A web exclusive by Azmi Anshar

DEWAN DISPATCHES: Don’t laugh! It’s looks and feels like a ‘general election’ budget...
Let’s cut to the chase. Everyone literally agrees that the annual budget tabled by the Finance Minister of the day is always designed for next year’s national financial and social prosperity. That aside, every Malaysian with an Inland Revenue tax file, a hefty cost of living to weigh down and a ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Anwar Ibrahim’s radioactive cult of personality
After Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in this morning as MP for Permatang Pauh and immediately assumed the position of Parliament Opposition Leader, a depressing scenario may have confronted the Barisan Nasional MPs, Government and backbenchers alike, especially the ones with immense loathing ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Anwar Ibrahim moshes his way surrealistically to the House
After the tumultuous yet cruise-controlled victory yesterday at Permatang Pauh, Anwar Ibrahim’s homecoming to the Dewan Rakyat is a tad surreal. Tomorrow, when he re-appears as a bona fide MP for the first time since 1998, the atmospheric pressure inside the House should be bobbing between high ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Syed Hamid’s DNA Bill defence diverts attention from Permatang Pauh
With hours to go before the official results of the Permatang Pauh parliamentary by-election are announced, the exit polls conjured by the Pakatan Rakyat gives the constituency to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, if you are to believe the optimistic projection spun by his people that 61 per cent of votes ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: House becomes platform for last-ditch Permatang Pauh campaigning
In the hours accelerating towards midnight tonight, the best place to look out for fiery debates, never mind if they are outlandish, hyperbolic, exaggerated and existentialist, is at the any given ceramah spots in Permatang Pauh, the constituency where the battle to capture the parliamentary seat ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Irony is not part of Permatang Pauh campaigning
There it rears its delectably ubiquitous head again inside the House. PERMATANG PAUH. And, unsurprisingly, by the father and son tag team of the Honourables Lim Kit Siang and Lim Guan Eng. As the first by-election after the watershed March 8 polls, the Permatang Pauh hustings is now deeply ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Anything & everything has symbiosis with Permatang Pauh hustings
The House, as is the country affixed with political junkies, is locked in a trance over Permatang Pauh. Anything and everything, no matter how remote or specious, no matter how trivial or trifle, has been conspired, imagined or articulated as having a symbiotic link to the mean dogfight hovering ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Lee Chong Wei becomes Permatang Pauh fodder
Being Far East Asians and from the Western bulk of view, Malaysians have generally developed a physique which perfectly suits non-contact or semi-contact sports. Witness our world-beating qualities in squash, badminton, lawn bowl and archery, among others, and then witness our drabness in ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Anwar vs the Umno machinery galvanises the House
From the political epicentre of the Dewan Rakyat, Permatang Pauh may be hundreds of kilometres up north where the wind whispers in anxious anticipation and the seas flirting with the shore of this now famed constituency hardly chop, but its capacity to invert the political process make MPs pay ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Anwar Ibrahim goes for broke in his high stakes political poker game
The second meeting of the first term of the 12th Parliament, which finished today, didn’t waltz through like it always did in previous meetings of yonder years, give and take a few missteps, when the Barisan Nasional held the House on a domineering two-thirds majority. Under-represented, the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Live TV debate, ACA query & police arrest in the continuing ‘Chronicles of Anwar Ibrahim’ epic
Can a man like Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim have a lot on his plate and not flinch? Can he multi-task wildly contrasting spheres of political, allegedly criminal and social actions that include instigating law enforcement officers and not collapse in a heap of stressed-out confusion? Not Anwar and not ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Speaker recoils like open–hooded cobra and bites back at DAP’s ‘too interventionist’ accusation
Casuists among the Pakatan Rakyat MPs, and there are many, may hold a slight but simmering resentment against Speaker of the House, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, to the point that he was told off as someone who “should not speak too much.”
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Home Minister wears concentric circles to take flak on gridlock insanity
Yesterday’s maddening security road blocks that gridlocked approaches to Parliament House moved motorists to plead temporary insanity as they stabbed electronic abuses to traffic police who obliviously turned Parliament House into a “war zone”, to borrow the Pakatan Rakyat’s hyperbole. Today, the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The no–confidence motion of theatre, security gridlock & Opposition walkout/boycott
Between Thursday and today, the political zeitgeist was punctuated by a bruising historical milestone: the unprecedented motion of no-confidence pledged against the Prime Minister, its contentious rejection today by the Dewan Rakyat Speaker and, disgruntled by how cool the Speaker jettisoned the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The SAPP pointman clears the political minefield for the Pakatan Rakyat army to advance
It is now diaphanously settled that when the Sabah Progressive Party – for all the inflation of its Lilliputian political ambitions – threatened to file a House motion of no-confidence against the Prime Minister on June 23, it surreptitiously acted as a “pointman”, a platoon scouting for the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Encore! Encore! And the 2nd Finance Minister reappears for a return performance
What merits a return engagement to the House? An oratorical command performance by a Minister or an MP so bewitching that it pressed members to screech for more? An articulation of the issues so stirring that it provokes hard the intellect and the demand are for seconds? Or perhaps a Ministerial ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The Court Jester with the wicked humour & funky sleight of hand
After the great perturbations twitched by a defunct ban on the media to commingle in the Parliament lobby, one very nearly vote of no-confidence, a Chair versus MP apologetic non-apology, one salacious sodomy charge and three explosive statutory declarations – all a ball of issues ricocheting ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Police probe SDs under microscope of public distrust & Anwar Ibrahim’s casus belli
The turbulent tribulations kung-fuing its way out of the RPK and Bala Statutory Declarations, and that police report of a sodomy charge, have now been nail-gunned brutishly into the Malaysian political psyche. The psychologically-muddled chicanery supposedly caused and committed by key characters ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Melodrama ends as statutory declarations ignite the possibility of winning Olympic gold
After three days of melodramatic dissidence between MP for Puchong Gobind Singh Deo and Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia that fixated the easily excitable MPs, the House may have been “converted” into a soundstage for the set of Law & Order: Dewan Rakyat for a fourth scintillating day of juicy ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The Gobind–Pandikar Amin melodrama that segued into Law & Order: Dewan Rakyat
The melodrama that Gobind Singh Deo and House Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia are playing out now has drawn interest from Hollywood TV producers looking to expand their entertainment empire to Asia. They may be piqued to pick the rights to this catfight and turn it into what may be a lucrative ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Fury over Gobind’s ‘apology’ & Speaker’s magnanimity mutates into Kit’s melancholy
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 ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: How very ‘British’ of the Opposition MPs to walk out on Najib
First Gobind Singh Deo (DAP-Puchong) was ordered out of the House by the House Speaker for stridently quibbling over relevancy to tenuously tie Anwar Ibrahim with a supplementary question about housing, then his tribe of Oppositionists, led by his mentors Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor) and his ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: When you goad the Speaker like you goad a referee, you get red-carded!
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 ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Pakatan Rakyat may test the constitution to build their shelved Penang projects
It was static to the ears of Penangites, a white noise of dread when the reality came crashing in that the RM2 billion Penang monorail and the RM1.5 billion Penang Outer Ring Road projects didn’t merit a mention for the much-needed funding. The Penang projects were not people friendly, the Prime ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: BN backbenchers simmering beef with Nazri Aziz
Parliament’s clampdown on the media, if it can be described in such brutish term, has transmuted into a new, previously unrealised, dimension. After yesterday’s histrionics of abruptly erected barricades emasculating access to the lobby and the barricade’s equally abrupt removal by the BN ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The Parliament needle and the damage done to the Press
For a sanctum that exalted formality, regulations and adequate notice, the stop signs that came guarded with security personnel appeared rudely and abruptly, and without notice, just like those police barricades erected in a moment’s notice to dilute crowd escalation to deter the uncontrollable ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: No bloodsport as ‘David’ slinks away from slinging ‘Goliath’
The SAPP no-show in the Dewan Rakyat, for all the trash talk over the past weekend, was an anti-climactic disenchantment. The threat of filing a motion of a historic no-confidence against the battle-scarred Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, vanished even before it began. In the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Are those the ghosts of Dr Mahathir & Anwar in Parliament?
After 16 torrid days and at the conclusion of its First Meeting of the First Session of 12th Parliament, the Dewan Rakyat quivered, rocked and steadied as never before. Its dominion is now brimming with a new look and outlook, festering with verve and panache as MPs exchanged barbs and insults, ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Barisan's majority endures Anwar Ibrahim’s salvo to check for coalition infractions
The first severe and conclusive acid test to assay the worth and quality of the Barisan Nasional majority’s resoluteness to remain glued against the infractions of defections in the Dewan Rakyat emerged today at 11.45am. The BN withstood the salvo propelled by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s earnest ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The minuscule minds behind a regressive newspaper boycott
It’s a defiant charge but there is little to discern between the Nazis who celebrated the burning of books 70-odd years ago and the Malaysian politicians of the Opposition variety fond of calling for the boycott of certain national newspapers just because the reports/commentaries upset their ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The democratic brimstone and defects that is Parliament’s ‘neutral zone’
As many as a thousand Malaysians, by rough estimates and on a frequency of four six-hour days a week, congregate to Parliament House every day since it commenced the “First Meeting of the First Session of 12th Parliament” last month to fulfil the desires and requirements of democracy or some parts ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Punishing National Service dodgers with delicious irony
Just last week, a Dewan Rakyat lawmaking activity passed by with such perfunctory efficiency that it didn’t merit MPs’ hawk-like scrutiny: it referred to the first reading of a Bill seeking a minor amendment to Section 18 (1) the National Service Training Act, 2003 that softens punishment for the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The Tiger bites the bullet
Wherever he goes, whatever he says and whoever he defends, or condemns, the world – state assembly, parliament, court of law, street demonstration – is his stage for political and human rights’ activism, a high moral ground of tough outrage covered in a sheen of rough and tumble experience. ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Dr Mahathir’s ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’ hypnosis
So, yesterday’s melodrama that was Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, ostensibly quitting Umno on the “dare” of a Pas heckler/operative (that’s what Pas is giddily bragging anyway), goading party members to follow him down the yellow brick road of redemption and demanding the Prime Minister to step down to ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The NEP question – locked, loaded and planted
THIRTY-EIGHT years gone and the New Economic Policy – while technically defunct, replaced in 1990 by the newer, too unfamiliar National Development Policy that continued engaging fundamental NEP principles – has aggrandised itself in socio-political realm and influence, still as trendy as wayfarer ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: If Temasek wants to sell BII equity, just grab it!
It was the first of the ministerial response to points raised during the debate on the royal address but the combative spirit of the House won’t allow Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop – the Second Finance Minister who was first in line – a fluent ride towards finishing his response, such was the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Devotion and derision in the presence of an absent Anwar Ibrahim
There is no escaping Anwar Ibrahim, he of the politics of consolidation and reinvention. Anywhere you look and everywhere you see where engaging debates on economy, finance, culture, politics and religion percolate endlessly, our Datuk Seri’s name pops up like instant message alerts and his ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Is KJ the young and the restless 'Prince of Darkness'?
At the prime age of 32, Khairy Jamaludin has somewhat effortlessly elevated himself as perhaps the most maligned political operative-turned-elected representative in the Malaysian political orbit, more so in its riotous blogosphere, next to the dominating presence of a certain ex-Prime Minister and ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Loathsome, likeable, flexible, mobile…but straight-up political survivor
Disputably, Datuk Paduka Ibrahim Ali is Malaysia’s greatest, if not the most famous, political survivor: a political punching bag of enormous buffer and a battering ram of raw intensity who berates opponents in his colorfully glottal Kelantanese-speak and outsized personality, not conforming to his ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Calling the bluff of the defection poker game
The Malay word ‘lompat’ is a sticky proposition in the lexicon of Malaysian politics. Strictly translated, it means “jump” but in the political realm, it means “defection”, an act both despised and embraced, depending on whether you are the one embracing deserters from a rival party or you are the ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Parliament’s great white shark
For as long as the political savvy can remember, Lim Kit Siang has been an authoritative presence in the Dewan Rakyat, an orator of sublime presentation on compelling issues of the day he wishes to hound on political rivals, or a predatory great white shark smelling blood dripping from a “wounded” ...
DEWAN DISPATCHES: Polls still a 'sore' and 'scoring' point
Two months have plodded on since the March 8 polls but for the politically-minded, the issues behind Barisan Nasional’s less-than-satisfactory electoral performance are either still a “sore” or “scoring” point, depending on which ideological fence you sit on when you engage your grandstanding.
DEWAN DISPATCHES: The good old bad days are back
Perhaps we should be grateful that our parliamentarians display bravery more with verbal rattling and macho posturing than with fists of furies and flying kicks. In some foreign people’s assembly, arguments that begin in a civilised nature would almost always degenerate into a flurry of violence ...