KUCHING – The four Pakatan Harapan MPs, who were stranded earlier in Jakarta, Indonesia, are now back in Malaysia.
Tuaran MP Datuk Seri Wilfred Madius Tangau, Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii, Petaling Jaya MP Lee Chean Chung and Subang MP Wong Chen were stranded at the Jakarta airport for more than 20 hours.
This was because their scheduled flight back to Malaysia was cancelled yesterday due to their Malaysia Airlines’ plane encountering technical difficulties.
“I received the call this morning (while I was still sleeping) that there are slots for us to fly back on a Malindo (Batik Air) flight at around 9.45am (Jakarta time),” Dr Yii said in a Facebook post today.
“This is to ensure we can be back in Parliament at least for the evening session (Parliament lasts till 9pm tonight).
“If not, we may need to take a later flight which was first scheduled at 2pm, but just now only, we received notification it is now rescheduled to 6pm (which may change again), meaning we will only arrive in KLIA around midnight earliest.”
He also thanked everyone for their words of encouragement.
“Thanks for all the messages/WhatsApp of encouragement. The funniest has to be asking us to continue being stuck in Jakarta so Liverpool can continue winning,” he said in jest.
All four lawmakers were in the Indonesian capital for the past three days to attend the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights conference and were supposed to be back for today’s Dewan Rakyat sitting to debate the budget and other matters.
In a Facebook post last night, Yii said he was made to understand that their original plane had a problem with its communications systems.
“Apparently, there is a problem with the communications systems as the pilot cannot communicate with the tower.
“Glad they figured that out before we flew. They tried restarting the system a few times but it still didn’t work,” he said. – Borneo Post Online, March 6, 2023
