Pertinent questions affecting Sivakumar and Ganesan

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On May 21, 2009

By Mohamad Hafiz Hassan (The Nut Graph)
[email protected]

THE debate on the legality of the removal of V Sivakumar as speaker of Perak state legislative assembly ("LA") has raised a number of pertinent questions.

This is the first and most crucial question: at what point did the first meeting of the second session of the 12th state LA on 7 May (7 May meeting") legally sit?

According to the opinion expressed by Tommy Thomas, the 7 May meeting did not legally sit until it was opened by the royal address of the Raja Muda of Perak (RM) which only took place between 3.16pm and 3.47pm.. He is of the view that the LA must have been "opened'' to be in a legal position to transact business, including deliberating a resolution to remove Sivakumar which was purportedly passed at about 10.30am.

In other words, the LA was not legally sitting when it passed the resolution. In consequence, Sivakumar was not lawfully removed and therefore continues to the lawful speaker.

Thomas relies on Standing Order (SO) 90 which allows Commonwealth parliamentary practice and usage to be used as guidance on issues where the standing orders of the state LA are silent. And relying on authoritative and leading texts on parliamentary procedure in the Commonwealth, he comes to the view as mentioned above.

The reliance on SO 90 is made because he considers the two other standing orders, namely SO 1 and SO 13, as not applicable to the 7 May meeting.

SO 1 states that on the first day of the meeting of the LA after a state general election (GE), members having assembled and seated accordingly, the secretary of the LA shall read the proclamation of His Highness the Sultan of Perak (HRH) by which the meeting was summoned and thereafter the LA shall transact the business in the order stated.

Since SO 1 expressly refers to the first meeting after a state GE, which is the first session of the legislative term, Thomas argues that it does not apply to the 7 May meeting.

This, however, begs the question: if the first meeting of the first session, which arguably is the 'mother of all sittings', commences with the secretary of the assembly reading the proclamation of His Royal Highness (HRH) following which the order of business for the day shall proceed, why not the first meeting of the second session, or subsequent sessions for that matter?