KUALA LUMPUR – After Budget 2021 passed at the policy level, the allocation for 11 ministries was passed at the committee level in the fifth week of the Dewan Rakyat sitting after being debated, wound up, and put through a majority vote and bloc voting process.
Some MPs described it as an 11-0 victory for the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government, after the 2021 budget allocation for all 11 ministries debated this week passed at the committee level, with four of them through a bloc voting process.
On Monday, the Supply Bill or Budget 2021 for the Prime Minister’s Department was passed at the committee level through a bloc voting process which saw 105 MPs voting in favour of the bill, while 95 voted against it and 20 were absent.
Also passed via bloc voting in that day’s sitting was the allocation for the Finance Ministry after 106 MPs voted for it, with 95 against and 18 absent.
The other two ministries whose allocations passed at committee level, through a bloc voting process, were the Plantation Industries and Commodities Ministry (108 MPs in favour; 95 against, seven absent), and the International Trade and Industry Ministry (110 in favour; 104 against and six absent).
The allocations for seven others, namely, the Foreign Ministry; National Unity Ministry; Agriculture and Food Industries Ministry; Rural Development Ministry; Energy and Natural Resources Ministry; Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry, as well as Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Ministry, were passed by a majority vote.
Budget allocations for 11 more ministries are scheduled to be debated and passed at the committee level in next week’s sitting.
Among those expected to attract the attention of lawmakers is the allocation for the Health Ministry, to be debated on Wednesday (December 9), which has been one of the main focuses of Budget 2021 to address the Covid-19 pandemic.
Apart from that, the allocation for the Communications and Multimedia Ministry on Thursday (December 10) is also expected to be hotly debated due to the allocation for the Special Affairs Department (Jasa) which has become disputed among MPs.
The government, however, agreed to rebrand Jasa as the Community Communications Department (J-KOM) with different roles and functions.
Also in this week’s sitting, Tasek Gelugor MP Datuk Shabudin Yahya’s mistake in the counting of the bloc votes to pass the budget for the Finance Ministry caused a war of words among lawmakers.
Shabudin (Bersatu-Tasek Gelugor), who was responsible for counting the votes for MPs in Bloc C, had miscounted the votes after ticking Padang Rengas MP Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz as being in favour of the budget, even though the latter was absent during the bloc voting on Tuesday (December 1).
The mistake, disclosed to MPs through a Speaker’s Announcement read out by Deputy Speaker Datuk Mohd Rashid Hasnon after Question Time, however, did not change the result of the bloc voting.
The Dewan Rakyat session on that day also did not start smoothly when the fire alarm went off and interrupted the sitting for about 15 minutes, causing MPs and staff to be ordered out of the Parliament building as a safety measure.
The Parliament Security Division then conducted the necessary inspection and found nothing untoward. – Bernama, December 4, 2020
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