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Use budget vote as bargaining chip for reforms, Wong Chen tells opposition
FMT Reporters
-October 28, 2020 11:14 AM
PETALING JAYA: A PKR MP has urged the opposition to consider using its Budget 2021 vote as a “bargaining chip” to make the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government implement reforms.
Subang MP Wong Chen said the opposition’s budget vote was the only “silver bullet” it had to test the legitimacy of the government, adding that this should not be given away freely.
“Parliamentary convention demands that if a government is defeated in a money bill, it has no choice but to resign. The budget vote is the mother of all money bills. If the prime minister loses this vote, he has to resign and his government will collapse.
“Therefore, we can’t simply surrender this silver bullet to the prime minister for free. Instead, we must consider using this as an all-important bargaining chip, to obtain some much-needed reforms to save democracy,” he said in a Facebook post today.
Wong Chen said there was ample time for demands to be made in exchange for the opposition’s vote and for Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to fulfil them since the final budget vote will only take place on Dec 10.
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weehingthong 