KUALA LUMPUR: Permatang Pauh Member of Parliament, Nurul Izzah Anwar wants the legal strategy of the Anti-Party Hopping bill to be reviewed.
She said it was because the amendment bill depended on the government's ever-changing concerns.
"How much of this amendment depends on the good intentions of the government?
"If it all depends on it, then it depends on an ever-changing landscape.
"It gives the government the power to permanently strip MPs of their seats. We need to review this legislative strategy," the PKR Election Director said in a Twitter post last night.
She said this in response to a lawyer's remarks that the proposed amendment to the Anti-Party Hopping bill was very dangerous.
The lawyer claimed it would not stop party hopping by elected representatives but allowed the government to abuse power to control other political parties.
The bill will cause a Member of Parliament to lose his/her seat.
Article 48 of the Constitution provides for situations in which MPs lose their seats.
Amending Article 10 without amending Article 48 will not prevent any elected federal representative from jumping and any bill passed would be deemed unconstitutional.
On the other hand, what the proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution does is to allow laws to be made to regulate the membership of MPs in political parties.
For example, hypothetically, a law could be passed to expel MPs from their political parties for being fined RM1,000.
Another example is, laws can also be passed to impose other conditions such as causing MPs arrested on national security grounds or prosecuted in court to lose their membership in a political party.
The also lawyer claimed that, in principle, the proposed amendment would cause MPs to lose their freedom of association when engaging in political parties.
He claimed it was a dangerous precedent because the government had greater control over political parties and the bill was just an excuse.
