An unprecedented crowd of Ministers queueing up to reply

It has been a long day in Parliament and not over yet. It is 9 pm. Parliament will not adjourn until 11 pm in the second of the three-day Ministerial winding-up for the 2006 Budget debate.

For the first time for decades, Cabinet Ministers are queueing up in Parliament to personally reply on behalf of their Ministries.

Currently, the Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister, Muhyiddin Yasin is replying. This is the ninth of 28 Ministries in the winding-up, involving eight Ministers (two Ministers replied for the Prime Minister’s Department, i.e Nazri Aziz and Dr. Abdullah bin Md Zin), and so far only two Ministries were not represented by the Minister.

The first was the Minister for Internal Security, none other than the Prime Minister himself, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. (Deputy Minister Chia Kwang Chye stood in to reply in his stead – a most unsatisfactory performance for both government and opposition MPs).

Who else for the other Ministerial absentee but the “Queen of Parliament” – Rafidah Aziz, Minister for International Trade and Industry, with the Deputy Minister, Husni Mohd Hanadzlah standing in for her.

I had stood up in Parliament when MITI came up to ask why she was not present in the House to personally reply to all the questions about the AP scandal and the national automotive policy controversy when she was well enough to give a long newspaper interview and to officially receive visiting dignitaries 48 hours after her kneecap replacement surgery 12 days ago.

The Ministers who have replied in the last two days are Najib Razak (DPM and Defence), Ong Ka Ting (Housing and Local Government), S. Samy Vellu (Works), Dr. Lim Keng Yaik (Energy, Water and Communications) and Hamid Albar (Foreign).

The Prime Minister must be commended for the new collective Ministerial respect for Parliament, as in the past, such chores in the winding-up in parliamentary policy debates would be delegated either to the deputy minister or parliamentary secretary, with the Minister playing truant from their parliamentary duties.

I hope this marks a new culture of Ministerial responsibility and accountability to Parliament where the first duty of Ministers is to appear in Parliament to answer to MPs unless they have really important affairs of state to justify their absence from Parliament. In the past, a senior Minister had the time to declare open a coffee shop but had no time to attend Parliament!

An impending and long-overdue Cabinet reshuffle is in the air. Let this not be the real reason for the unusual Ministerial crowd for the winding-up.

I have to stop here for a while. I am in my office in the 14th floor of the Parliament Tower Block as I have go down to the Chambers. Let this be the beginning of a rolling blog on today’s marathon sitting, to be continued on and off in the next few hours.