Pertubuhan Sahabat Erat Dan Amanat Rakyat (Sedar) Malaysia president Nazrin Norani said the petition demands Parliament and state legislatures to enact laws to stem the culture of party-hopping, considering that a large number of elected representatives had switched sides after the 14th general election.

“Such proposed legislation will not prohibit the elected reps from joining any political party of their choice.

“Rather, it states the consequences of their action. Their seat will be deemed vacant once they are no longer with the political party they stood for in the election.

“Thus, this will not contravene the right of freedom of association, as guaranteed under Article 10 of our Federal Constitution,” he said today during a press conference at Wisma MCA on Jalan Ampang.

He said the group would try to reach out to more people nationwide to sign the petition before handing it over to the opposition leader.

The objective of implementing such a law was to get the country back on track, he said.

“We have checked with many people on the ground and they are not happy with the current state of affairs.

“The political instability in our country has influenced the economy. People are bored of the games played by politicians.”

He said the petition will convey the public’s disenchantment with party-hopping to the government.

The NGO had collected 3,000 signatures since the petition was launched on Dec 22 and 95% of the respondents said they were unhappy over price hikes of goods and inefficient implementation of policies by the government.

Emails sent to all MPs seeking support

Nazrin said the group was not financed or supported by any political party. MCA had only offered the place to hold the press conference, he added.

“It has been seven months, but the government and the opposition are yet to play their roles effectively.

“Many of the opposition leaders have chosen to join the government. Now, who is left to look after the country?”

Nazrin said he had emailed the petition to almost 200 MPs seeking their support but has yet to receive a response from them.

“I believe most of them have received the email.

“We will give them some time but if there is no response till Jan 16 next year, we will let the people know who these MPs are,” he said

The petition will remain open to respondents till June 2019, before the group hands it over to the opposition leader or the law minister, who will present it to Parliament.

During this period, Nazrin said they would start a roadshow to reach out to more people across the country for their views and signatures.

Apart from the call to enact a new law to prevent more MPs from hopping to other parties, Nazrin said they were also pushing for equal monetary allocation for elected representatives.

“Presently, MPs from the ruling coalition get RM500,000 for their respective constituencies and RM200,000 for their service centres, while the opposition MPs are only allocated RM100,000 for their constituencies.

“Why should there be a discrimination in allocations? It is equivalent to penalising the voters who didn’t vote for the governing party,” he said.

Nazrin’s deputy, Subash Chandrabose Arumugam Pillai, said such practices must stop.

He said the anger among the public was not just directed towards the government but the opposition as well.