Anti-hopping law: ‘Do it for the people’
Such a legislation is needed because jumping from one party to another is a betrayal of the voters’ mandate, says Gerakan.
Athi Shankar, FMT
Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat should set aside their partisan politics to jointly legislate anti-hopping laws to protect public interests, said a local Gerakan politician.
Penang Gerakan legal and human rights bureau head, Baljit Singh, said BN and Pakatan should do it for the sake of all Malaysians.
However, he said it was easier said than done because the majority of politicians, especially elected lawmakers, were too deeply engrossed in partisan politics.
He said they constantly stayed away from taking an independent stand on various issues merely to protect their respective party’s, not public, interests.
He said most politicians would react indifferently on party hopping depending on whether it was for or against party interests.
“But party hopping is against public interests. It’s a betrayal of the voters’ mandate,” Baljit told FMT.
Hence, he said it was time both BN and Pakatan set aside their political differences and amended the Federal Constitution to prevent party hopping among MPs and assemblymen.
“Both sides should do it before the next general election,” said Baljit, who has always been vocal against “political frogs”.
DAP supremo Karpal Singh has said the party would propose a constitutional amendment to deter party hopping by federal and state lawmakers if Pakatan were to capture Putrajaya.
Baljit said he was not surprised with Karpal’s statement since the DAP national chairman had always been consistently against party hopping.
He pointed out that PAS had also shown its clear stand against it vis-à-vis its Kelantan government’s anti-hopping law in the 1990s.
However, he is amazed with the indifferent stand taken by DAP’s “Lim Dynasty” and PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim on the pressing issue.
The Lim Dynasty is a political idiom propagated by critics to portray DAP faction led by its national adviser Lim Kit Siang and, his son and secretary-general Guan Eng.
