What will Pandikar do on November 30?

Last week, I noted the impact John Bercow made as speaker of the British Parliament for six years and questioned the impact of Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, speaker of the Malaysian Parliament for seven years.

​I also pointed out that Bercow has to seek a fresh mandate from his constituents if he wants to remain as speaker.

What I did not spell out is that Pandikar does not have the mandate of voters from any parliamentary constituency.

Pandikar does not have a parliamentary constituency because in 2008, Datuk Seri Musa Aman, Chief Minister of Sabah did not give Pandikar a ticket to run for re-election.

When, in 2008, he was appointed speaker of Parliament by former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, he quit as Umno division chief. He claimed he quit in order to “remain neutral and be respected by all parties” though he remained a member of Umno.

The first party Pandikar joined was Usno, the party of Tun Mustapha Harun that had prevented Pandikar’s father from running for office in 1971 by jailing him.

Within a year of joining Usno, Pandikar, aged 28 years, won office as a state representative.

Four years later he became the youngest ever speaker of a state assembly in the Federation of Malaysia.

In 1984 Pandikar formed a new party, Parti Bersih, with himself as president. The following year, Parti Bersih fared badly in elections.

Pandikar then joined PBS which had been formed by Tan Sri Pairin Kitingan, and, aged 32 years, became speaker of the state assembly.

Soon after Pandikar and Pairin parted company, Pairin apparently suspected that Pandikar was going to table a vote of no confidence against him.

Pairin was said to have offered Pandikar a trade, in which Pandikar accepted. He quit as speaker in return for a term as senator.

Next, Pandikar co-founded Parti Akar. The party was an ally to Umno-BN and it defeated PBS.

A few years later, Parti Akar was dissolved. All its members moved into Umno. Pandikar’s reward was senatorship and the position of Minister in the PM’s Department.

In the 2004 general election, Pandikar won a parliamentary seat from Sabah. For reasons which I have not been able to discover, Umno-BN would not put him up as a candidate in 2008.

To prevent Pandikar from forming another party and threatening Umno-BN’s vote-bank, Badawi appointed him speaker, where he remains to this day.

Clearly, Pandikar is a political animal. He has been in Usno, Parti Bersih, Parti Akar, and Umno. He has been considered a potential threat by several astute politicians and has clearly been given positions to keep him from becoming a threat.

I have described at some length the political background and the assessment of seasoned politicians like Pandikar’s threat level to give you a sense of who he is.

Is he a reformer? Is he in politics for personal power or for the nation’s good? The role of Parliament is to scrutinise the government and to hold it accountable.

Yet, under Pandikar, Parliament has continued to be the servant of the government although he had said that he wanted to correct the public’s perception of Parliament being a rubber stamp.

Pandikar said in May this year that he wanted to introduce reforms.

He said he wanted to restore the Parliamentary Service Act, which would make Parliament independent of the civil service and the Prime Ministers Department; a one hour Question Time each week where ministers would have to respond to questions from MPs; more Parliamentary Select Committees and some kind of second chamber which no one seems to understand.

According to news reports, Pandikar set a target of six months for the government to table the motion for reform in Parliament. The six months will be up in three weeks.

Pandikar has also publicly called for abolishment of the post of Parliamentary Affairs Minister – currently held by Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim.

Will Pandikar meet his targets?

If he does not, will he resign not only of protest but of vote-winning integrity?

Since the evidence indicated that Pandikar was appointed Speaker in order to curb his ability to dilute BN’s Sabah vote bank, how would the government respond to Pandikar’s urge to restore Parliament to its rightful role of watchdog over the government?

We will know in 3 weeks. – November 21, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.