SHAH ALAM: Parliament will study the Selangor assembly's standing orders that allow sittings to be conducted online in the event of emergencies.
Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Johari Abdul said the Selangor assembly's standing order on allowing it to convene online in the event of emergencies would be used as a guide to the federal legislature's effort to allow hybrid sittings.
"The Selangor assembly has taken the lead by amending the standing order to allow sittings to take place without the assemblymen physically present in the hall.
"This has been followed by how a law or enactment can be passed and is legal even though (the assemblyman) is not physically sitting by amending some of the meeting rules.
"This allows the meeting to take place," Johari said after a working visit to the Selangor assembly yesterday.
"We will learn from Selangor. We already have a draft but we will use these (the Selangor assembly standing order) as a guide to strengthen our standing orders so that we can rectify some of the problems we are going through," he said.
Also present were Selangor Speaker Lau Weng San and Deputy Speaker Mohd Kamri Kamaruddin.
Johari said that when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Parliament and all state assemblies were unable to convene.
"We have been through the same thing in Parliament before when Covid-19 struck. We couldn't meet and, at that time, no one had expected to be struck by a pandemic.
"But now we have gone through the process and Selangor is ahead of other states. Even Parliament is lagging compared with Selangor.
"Some other states have also come forward and we will collect all this (information on hybrid sittings) and, God willing, we will see how we can implement it," he said.
On Aug 30, 2021, Selangor became the first state in the country to allow its assembly meetings to be held in a hybrid manner.
A motion to amend the standing order, tabled by Datuk Teng Chang Khim, allows meetings to be held online in whole or in part after the speaker receives confirmation from the menteri besar that Selangor was in a state of emergency, pandemic or extremely harmful contingency where the assemblyman's presence was not possible.