Sunshine Bill rejected by Speaker

As expected, my 'Sunshine Bill' announced yesterday has been rejected by the Speaker of the Selangor State Assembly, Tan Sri Onn bin Ismail.

My office received a letter dated 15.11.2007 from the speaker this morning citing the reason that it was beyond the jurisdiction of the Selangor State Assembly to pass law that falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government.

The Speaker has invoked O27(5)(b) of the Standing Orders which reads "if Mr Speaker is of opinion that any notice received by the Clerk infringes any of the provisions of these Orders or is otherwise out of order, he may direct that it be returned to the member who signed it, as being in his opinion out of order" to reject my notice of motion to table the said bill.

However, he did not elaborate how the proposed bill had infringed any of the provisions of the Standing Orders. This is yet another incident showing how the Selangor State Assembly controlled by the Barisan Nasional abuses its power to defeat a motion tabled by the opposition.

In rejecting the proposed Sunshine Bill, the Selangor State Government led by Dato Seri Dr Khir Toyo has again demonstrated that it does not have the political will to stamp out corruptions and malpractices which is rampant in the Selangor adminsitration, thus, lowering the standard of the self-proclaimed developed state to that of a 'state of broom' where the head of government would happily give away brooms as 'prizes' to the civil servants for their incompetence and inefficiency.