Teresa Kok

The MP, The Legislator

Although Malaysians cast their votes in general elections to elect Parliamentarians, it is most unfortunate that most people in Malaysia do not understand the real function and role of Parliamentarians. They present all sorts of complaints to the MP’s, they expect MP’s to be social workers, counselors, money-givers, city councilors etc.

These never-ending public complaints and the incessant politicking has caused many MP’s to forget their basic role, i.e. to legislative policy making, and to enact and amend laws.

In the June / July 2006, parliamentary sitting, members of Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara debated the amendments to the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) that was tabled by the Parliamentary Select Committee formed in 2004 to review both laws and composed of six MP’s drawn from different political parties and headed by Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad.

The last time the Malaysian Parliament set up a Select Committee was to consider and enact the Dangerous Drugs Act. It was another 20 years before Parliament set up another Select Committee to study and review law. This long lapse of 20 years shows that our Parliament, one that is so tightly controlled by the Executive, had forgotten its major role viz. to constantly study and look into the laws and policies of our nation. Instead this important responsibility is left to the civil servants, and Members of Parliament who supposed to be law-makers end up only debating the bills that were drafted by civil servants. Worse, Parliament passes most of the bills without amendment, sometimes with hardly any debate.

Being a member of the Parliament Select Committee that reviewed the Penal Code and the CPC, I had the opportunity to travel within the country and abroad to hear different views on both laws. The members of the committee understood the difficulties of law-making, and understood that some idealism cannot be put into the law completely as we did not have the requisite conditions or the diversity of opinions on certain issue was too great.

That was why the Select Committee did not recommend the abolishment of the death penalty and whipping. It also did not recommend punitive measures against police officers who failed to submit investigation status reports to many crime complainants, as well as did not criminalize marital rape strictly. While this may have disappointed many human rights groups, the Select Committee did take bold steps towards protecting human rights and preventing abuses of power, in particular, the amendments to the infamous clauses 113 and 117 of the CPC which allowed police officers to force confessions from suspects and detain them for up to 14 days in police lock-up’s in the name of police investigation.

Besides, we have tightened up the definition of terrorism to prevent it from being misused to target political dissidents, introduced television and video conferencing for the trial of certain offences, as well as introducing community service to replace jail terms for youthful offenders and rehabilitative counseling for rapists.

I concede that the amendments to the Penal Code and the CPC that was presented by the Parliamentary Select Committee and passed by Parliament is not perfect. It also failed to please all parties, but I am happy that the Select Committee had allowed MP’s to play their role as legislators, in the true sense of the word, and the Committee went through a democratic process to consult all stakeholders besides curbing human rights abuses on citizens in police custody.