MP SPEAKS | The Parliament lockdown last Thursday and on Monday symbolises the lack of credibility, legitimacy and the abysmal failure to bring under control the Covid-19 pandemic of Muhyiddin Yassin’s government.

Because of its Sheraton Move” origins, the only redeeming feature of the illegitimate, undemocratic “backdoor” government is to bring the Covid-19 pandemic under control, which the kakistocratic backdoor government has signally failed to do.

When the Covid-19 pandemic started under the Pakatan Harapan government last year, there were only 22 Covid-19 cases and zero death when the Pakatan Harapan government was toppled on Feb 24 that same year.

When the emergency was proclaimed on Jan 11 this year, there were 235,992 total Covid-19 cases and a total of 551 Covid-19 deaths.

At the end of the emergency on July 31, the cumulative total of Covid-19 cases broke the 1.1 million mark and increased five times to 1,113,272 cases while the cumulative total of Covid-19 deaths broke the 9,000-mark and increased 16 times to 9,024 Covid-19 deaths.

If the Covid-19 data on Jan 10 were justification for the declaration of an emergency, then the Covid-19 data on July 31 would have provided many more times justification for an extension of Emergency.

But the fact that Covid-19 cases increased five times and Covid-19 deaths increased 16 times prove that the declaration of emergency was neither science nor data based but politically motivated.

The five-day Parliament special meeting was supposed to be the occasion for the drafting of a new war policy and strategy against the Covid-19 pandemic which is truly “all-of-government” and “whole-of-society” and not just in lip-service, but instead, it was a disaster right from the beginning, with de facto Law Minister Takiyuddin Hassan, with the approval of the prime minister, misleading Parliament and the nation with the assertion that six Emergency Ordinances had been revoked on July 21 when there had been no Royal Assent or gazette.

As a result, Parliament and the nation were distracted from a debate on:

(i) the need to distance from the National Recovery Plan with its blind faith in “total lockdowns” and to open up all businesses in keeping with “Live with Covid” instead of “Zero Covid” objective, with targeted lockdowns only in extreme circumstances; and

(ii) averting the calamitous figures of 1.5 million Covid-19 cases and over 15,000 Covid-19 deaths when Malaysia celebrates the 64th National Day on Aug 31 and two million Covid-19 cases and nearly 20,000 Covid-19 deaths on the 58th Malaysia Day on Sept 16.

Instead, Parliament and the nation were for the whole week engrossed with a major constitutional crisis in the making instead of the worsening Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia.

This is the height of irresponsibility and criminality.

It is time for everyone to re-focus on the Covid-19 pandemic, which is creating global havoc with the latest Delta variant to the Covid-19 virus.

The Parliament lockdown on Monday is not only contradictory to the need for a new war policy and strategy to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, based on “Living with Covid” instead of “Zero Covid”, but a gross abuse of power putting the interests of the “backdoor” government ahead of the lives and interests of the Malaysian people and nation.

It is symbolic of the lack of credibility and legitimacy, and the failure of the Muhyiddin government to bring the Covid-19 pandemic under control.

I call on Muhyiddin to lift the Parliament lockdown tomorrow to allow MPs to address the worsening Covid-19 pandemic as well as a major constitutional crisis in the Dewan Rakyat and not to use the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to shut down parliamentary democracy in Malaysia.

LIM KIT SIANG is a DAP veteran and MP for Iskandar Puteri.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.