Jaxon’s Review

As I was about to step into my office building yesterday, I bumped into a colleague, whose means of greeting was to ask about politics.

“So, I heard your Sabah MPs are switching parties on Wednesday. Is that true?” he asked. I told him, that couldn’t be.

“You think they will switch parties?” he asked again. I said one or two might do so. But then, that would be alang-alang (less than enough), I told him. We burst out laughing.

No laughing matter?

Later on as I was reading the breaking news from the parliament sitting, I realised that I might have spoken too soon; that I’ve been away too long from my homestate that I might have underestimated the strength of the sentiments among the people back home.

Yesterday, a MP from Sabah, Abdul Ghapur Salleh, spoke strongly against the federal government, saying it had been neglecting Sabah all this while, economically, and now, politically.

He said Sabah, which together with Sarawak, won the government for the Barisan Nasional, had only been given three ministerial posts while a state (Selangor) where the ruling coalition lost the state government, was awarded with four ministerial posts.

Ghapur made the remark just days after another Sabah MP, Anifah Aman, said that there was nothing wrong in switching parties if the party in which the Sabah representatives currently in, was not giving them any space.

It’s about number

The magic number is not 13, but 30. The opposition needed that number to force the government of the day out of office. But the numbers are too great. And it would be near impossible for the opposition to pull that many MPs to switch camps.

Anti-hop law

Some MPs from the ruling parties apparently are feeling the heat and have called for the enactment of some sorts of legislations to prevent members from switching parties.

Basically, it was to force those who wanted to switch parties to resign from their seat to pave the way for a by-election. The downside is, the person who resigned would lose his or her eligibility to contest in an election for five years.

Anti-hop law is unlawful, court ruled

Perhaps those who had been asking for the institution of such a law, had not been digging too far back into history.

More than a decade ago in Sabah, we do have such a law to prevent the representatives of the then opposition PBS government from switching parties.

The provision was a subject a lengthy court trial which in the end, the court ruled that the anti-hop provision of the State Constitution was null and void as it contravened the freedom of association as enshrined in the Federal Constitution.

In other words

In other words, the YBs are free to switch parties, which is not a politically-correct things for me to say as I am supposed to be apolitical. I guess my views are harmless and will not, in any way, move a mountain.

So, will my Sabah MPs switch parties? Only time will tell. But definitely, not on Wednesday (tomorrow). Perhaps some other Wednesdays.