Slacking MPs

By now, I’m sure the talk of the town is all about the nearly defeated Budget 2010 last night, by the Opposition lawmakers.

In the parliament, BN has 137 of the 222 seats, followed by Pakatan Rakyat’s 82 and 3 Independents.

If the Budget 2010 was approved with 66 votes for and 63 against, that means more than half of the lawmakers from the BN were sleeping and not carrying out their duties as the people’s representatives, putting the PM Najib Tun Razak into such an embarrassing moment where it’s understand that this is the first time that the national budget was approved with such a narrow margin.

A rejection would have negative implications for the BN government, as in a parliamentary democracy, a rejected budget is seen as a no-confidence vote towards the ruling government and indirectly opens the way for the formation of a new government.

Now, besides the fact that lawmakers from the ruling coalition camp are not performing up to the least expectation, this drama has indeed revealed the importance of having a strong opposition in the Parliament, to perform a healthy check-and-balance, by making sure that all the elected representatives are there to highlight the plight of the people and not going on for early Christmas holiday, when the parliament extended its sessions in the past weeks to finish its business by this Thursday before it takes the year-end break.

It’d be such a disgrace for the BN if the results went otherwise, especially when even the top shot of the biggest component parties Umno and MCA, were forced to attend the session at the very last minute, just to put up their hands in approval for the budget, while the machais are happily indulging in white snow in another part of the world.

To all the MPs from PR who were in to vote against, well done, you guys did a marvelous in instilling some sense into the fellow MPs from BN on what is the least criteria to be an elected and responsible MP.