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Malaysia’s parliament in chaos as PM Muhyiddin refuses to allow debate on Covid-19 policies
- Opposition MPs, including Anwar Ibrahim and former PM Mahathir Mohamad, rose to make points of order at start of year’s first session
- They claimed Muhyiddin was defying the king’s decree that a full parliamentary debate on the coronavirus emergency was to be held
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Malaysia’s parliament, sitting for the first time in eight months, was mired in chaos on Monday as opposition lawmakers accused Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin of royal insult for disallowing a debate during the special five-day session.
Apart from the absence of a full debate and an accompanying vote, the opposition camp was left doubly incensed after Muhyiddin left midway through the session, leaving his finance minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz to deliver a winding-up speech.
The prime minister spoke earlier in the morning on the country’s Covid-19 recovery plan, and lawmakers were thereafter allowed short interventions.
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“Never before in history – since independence and since the establishment of parliament – has there been a time when questions to the prime minister and an emergency are answered by the finance minister,” opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said as Tengku Zafrul began his speech in the late afternoon.
The 222-seat lower house, the Dewan Rakyat, and the 70-seat upper house, the Dewan Negara, had been suspended since Malaysia’s king, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, approved a state of emergency in January that is due to expire on August 1.
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