KUALA LUMPUR: The tabling of today's Constitution (Amendment) Bill (No. 3) 2022 and the Provision for the Prohibition of Members of Parliament (MPs) from Party-Hopping, better known as the Anti-Party Hopping bill, needs to be fine-tuned in future, opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim told the House.
Anwar (Pakatan Harapan-Port Dickson) said the bill had room for improvement, especially with regards to the failure to define if political parties leaving a coalition was similar to party-hopping.
"This is one of the weaknesses in this bill, but we decided to support the bill, although not wholeheartedly because not everything that was demanded made it to the bill.
"Our demands include upholding democratic principles. We make promises to the people and, if at any time, we find that we are unable to fulfil them, we must let the people make the next decision.
"So, in future amendments, we must consider including this because when that happened (politicians changing parties), it only led to chaos, our performance dropped and our economy weakened," he said in the Dewan Rakyat today.
Anwar was responding to Khalid Samad (PH-Shah Alam) who earlier said that he was disappointed with the lack of a provision in the bill to also punish a political party for betraying the coalition of which it is part.
Khalid was referring to the February 2020 Sheraton Move where Bersatu announced its exit from the PH pact to form a new government with Barisan Nasional.