In the first part of his interview last week, Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia talked about the speaker’s impartiality and dealing with accusations of bias. In part two, he discusses improvements for Malaysia’s Parliament, and the realities of local parliamentary and political culture. TNG: In line with other advanced parliamentary systems, what [...]

PETALING JAYA, 21 March 2011: How does Parliament work? How well do you know your Members of Parliament (MPs) and what they stand for? And what is the state of democracy in Malaysia? Answers to these questions will soon be out in a new book, Understanding the Dewan Rakyat, by The Nut Graph in collaboration [...]

ONE thing is obvious from the answers of the Members of Parliament (MPs) who responded to The Nut Graph‘s MP Watch: Eye on Parliament project: more focus is given to their roles as constituency caretakers than as lawmakers. Not that it’s entirely the MPs’ fault. Part of the reason for this is the way the [...]

THE last general election birthed a situation that was not common before 2008: the Barisan Nasional (BN) functioning as an opposition. Although the BN has been the opposition in Kelantan for many years, it was a completely new experience for them in Selangor, Penang, Perak and Kedah. Indeed, the blanket term “opposition” previously used to [...]

WHY has there been such a furore over the government’s amendment of the Subordinate Courts Act? And why should the public care that the Act has been amended? As a result of Parliament passing the amendment, the Sessions Court can now hear civil cases worth up to RM1 million while the Magistrates Court cases worth [...]

PETALING JAYA, 16 July 2010: All 222 Members of Parliament (MPs) have been contacted for the MP Watch: Eye on Parliament project, and have responded with either full answers or a non-reply. As of 15 July, 113 MPs answered in full all six questions on key democracy issues that were posed to them. The other [...]