He said this licence was conferred on him by the “Blue Book”, a reference to the blue cover of the parliamentary Standing Orders booklet, which he held up at the dewan’s sitting today to emphasise his point.
“Sometimes, I think there are MPs who believe they possess a big licence.
“Actually, the one who has the big licence (in managing Dewan Rakyat meetings) is the speaker. Only the speaker has this big licence to use the ‘Blue Book’,” he said.
Pandikar was responding to Klang MP Charles Santiago who criticised the speaker’s rejection of a motion to debate the poverty and malnutrition reported among children living in low-cost housing areas in Kuala Lumpur by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
Santiago said the issue should be the country’s top priority as the Unicef report stated that one in five children is growing at a slower rate compared with children in Thailand, while eight out of 10 families did not have even RM1 in savings.
“The report demonstrates the failure of public policy in providing a better quality of life for urban poor families.
“It is unacceptable to object (to a motion on the matter),” he said during a press conference at the Dewan Rakyat media centre today.
Pandikar said he rejected the motion because the issue was not urgent and did not involve public interest.
He added that MPs who disagreed with his decision could file a protest motion to be included in the order paper for the meeting.
“The rules of the dewan meetings were not made by me. They existed before I became the speaker,” he said.
Pandikar also said he did not need to give elaborate reasons on how he arrived at his decisions.
“When I make a decision, whether oral or written, it means I have decided. That is in the Standing Orders,” he said.
“There are MPs who not only refuse to follow my orders but also challenge me to resign.”
Yesterday, three DAP MPs — V Sivakumar (Batu Gajah), Ngeh Koo Ham (Beruas) and Nga Kor Ming (Taiping) — demanded that Pandikar resign for disallowing an emergency motion to debate the seizure of the Equanimity, a luxury yacht linked to Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, and questions related to the government’s investment fund, 1MDB.
In a joint statement, Nga, Ngeh and Sivakumar had said the Dewan Rakyat should not become an “accomplice to cover up corruption scandals”.
“As speaker Pandikar had failed to uphold the truth, then the most honourable thing for him to do is to resign,” their statement said.
The Equanimity was seized by Indonesian authorities last Wednesday in Bali, in a joint effort with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Jho Low is a central figure in the US Department of Justice (DoJ) probe into allegations that billions of dollars had been stolen from 1MDB and used to buy assets.