I congratulate Azhar Azizan@Harun a.k.a Art Harun for his appointment as EC Chairman. Netizens in my circle believe he will do well at it and so do I.<\/p>\n
Opposition MP, Khairy Jamaluddin also shared his confidence in Azhar helming the EC though he urged Azhar not to accept the appointment. KJ said the appointment is against PH manifesto.<\/p>\n
Firstly, I applaud KJ for reminding PH about its election promise on this particular issue. Where no other opposition members seem to be functional, KJ’s comment is at times important.<\/p>\n
Having said that, I think KJ should leave Art out of his politics because Art is not a politician. He is not a member of any political party and he’s just doing a national service.<\/p>\n
KJ was referring to Promise 17, in the PH GE14 Manifesto. It\u2019s a long one but I\u2019ll just mention the necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe PH Government will free the Election Commission from the grips of the Prime Minister and other politicians by placing the EC fully under Parliamentary monitoring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, \u201cAppointment of members of the EC will be through the process of approval by the Parliament\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yes, KJ can argue that this is against the PH manifesto but it is not that simple.<\/p>\n
PH cannot immediately fulfill this promise because to put the EC under the Parliament should require constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n
1) The election Commission shall be appointed by the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong after consultation with the Conference of Rulers, and shall consist of a chairman, a deputy chairman and five other members.<\/p>\n
So, at this juncture, it is still constitutional for the Agong to appoint the committee members without going through Parliament.<\/p>\n
For PH to keep its Promise 17, they will need to table a constitutional amendment which will require 2\/3 majority vote from the MPs.<\/p>\n
PH do not have 2\/3 majority to ensure this and even if they do, will Dewan Negara still full of BN senators block it?<\/p>\n
They did this with the Anti Fake News Act repeal motion and it will delay it for year. They also rejected the SST bill, which being a Monetary bill gets delayed by only 30 days.<\/p>\n
KJ should know how his friends in the senate will play this, so whilst his comment is a good reminder, it is also very cheeky.<\/p>\n
In avoiding unnecessary hazards, we can have EC appointments starting with Azhar Harun based on the existing Constitution.<\/p>\n
PH can work on the constitutional amendment later so that Promise 17 can be kept.<\/p>\n
This is also why, as I have suggested earlier, that we need more PH senators in Dewan Negara to provide the balance.<\/p>\n
I also suggested in my Open Letter to Anwar Ibrahim, that he is the right man to reform Dewan Negara before he makes a return to Dewan Rakyat.<\/p>\n
-By Mujahidin Zulkiffli<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I congratulate Azhar Azizan@Harun a.k.a Art Harun for his appointment as EC Chairman. Netizens in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1066,524,15],"tags":[1635,1637,1466,1636],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","category-nation","category-politics","tag-azhar-harun","tag-ec","tag-khairy-jamaluddin","tag-kj"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun.jpg",1026,748,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun-300x219.jpg",300,219,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun-768x560.jpg",640,467,true],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun-1024x747.jpg",640,467,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun.jpg",1026,748,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun.jpg",1026,748,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun.jpg",1026,748,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun.jpg",1024,747,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Azhar-Harun.jpg",652,475,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"Editorial<\/a> Nation<\/a> Politics<\/a>","tag_info":"Politics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=747"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}