Better to have anti-party hopping laws in place before GE15, says law minister

- Bernama

KUCHING: Anti-party hopping legislation should be put in place before the 15th General Election (GE15), says Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Parliament and Law) Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar.

"To me, it's better if we implement the law before having the general election, because we don't want what happened (in 2020) to happen again.

"If the law is not ready when we have the election, elected representatives could be hopping left and right after that," he told reporters at a Hari Raya gathering for his constituents here on Wednesday (May 4).

The Santubong MP was referring to the fall of the Pakatan Harapan government in 2020 after a number of MPs pulled out of the coalition, some of them switching parties.

Wan Junaidi also said the Parliamentary Special Select Committee on the proposed legislation, which he chairs, had not reached a final decision in its fine-tuning of the Bill.

He said the committee was scheduled to meet again on May 12.

"This is a powerful committee with experienced legal experts, so I am confident we can resolve whatever issues there were with the proposed Bill," he said.

He added that once the scrutiny was complete, it was up to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob to decide when the Bill would be tabled in Parliament, whether it is at the scheduled July session or a special sitting before that.