Decorative Picture<\/p>\n
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia hit a historic political\u00a0milestone today\u00a0when the amendment to the Federal Constitution to prohibit members of Dewan Rakyat from changing parties or committing\u00a0party-hopping was passed after it received two-thirds majority support from the Dewan Rakyat.
\nThrough a bloc voting, 209 out of the 220 Members of Parliament (MPs) voted in favour of the\u00a0Constitution (Amendment) Bill (No. 3) 2022, while 11 others were absent.
\n\u201cCongratulations to all MPs who were involved in creating history today,\u201d Speaker\u00a0Tan Sri Azhar Azizan Harun said after announcing the result of the bloc voting.
\nThe amendment was debated by 54 MPs after it was tabled for a second reading by Prime Minister\u00a0Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob yesterday.
\nThe amendment comprised four paragraphs and six clauses, including a clause stating that a member of Dewan Rakyat will lose the seat that he won if he switches to another party.
\nMinister in the Prime Minister\u2019s Department (Parliament and Law)\u00a0Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar when winding up the debate on the bill said members of the Dewan Rakyat who quit their party to join another will cease to be a Dewan Rakyat member and must vacate their\u00a0seats.
\nHe said independent members of Dewan Rakyat who formed a political coalition and become direct members of the coalition, will also be deemed as having switched parties if they left the coalition.
\nHowever, he said any action of a political party to leave a coalition and join another will not be deemed as changing parties.
\nMeanwhile,\u00a0Wan Junaidi said if a member of Dewan Rakyat upheld principles contrary to his party which,\u00a0according to the party constitution, can cause him to be sacked from the party,\u00a0he will also be deemed as having jumped ship and must vacate his seat.
\n\u201cIn regard to this, the party constitution will decide the action to be taken against the member of Dewan Rakyat. So, there is a need for an amendment to be made to the party constitution to ensure that it\u00a0is in line with this bill,\u201d he said.
\n\u00a0The constitutional amendment bill was tabled for first reading at the Dewan Rakyat special sitting on April 11\u00a0but had to be re-scrutinised in terms of setting a clearer policy.
\nThe\u00a0same special meeting also approved the motion to set up the Special Select Committee comprising both government and opposition representatives to give their recommendations on the proposed amendment.
\nThe Special Select Committee had held seven meetings and discussions between April 15 and July 12, while engagement sessions between the MPs from both the government and opposition blocs had also been held on July 25 and 26 before the bill was finally tabled for the second reading yesterday.
\nThe Dewan Rakyat sitting continues on Monday.
\n— BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Decorative Picture KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia hit a historic political\u00a0milestone today\u00a0when the amendment to the Federal Constitution to prohibit members of Dewan Rakyat from changing parties or committing\u00a0party-hopping was passed after it received two-thirds majority support from the Dewan Rakyat. Through a bloc voting, 209 out of the 220 Members of Parliament (MPs) voted in favour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":14213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14214,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14210\/revisions\/14214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}