PETALING JAYA: Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Azhar Azizan Harun has denied that there were deliberate efforts to delay the tabling of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the littoral combat ship (LCS) project.
"We tabled the report as soon as it was given to us and we were told to do so by PAC.
"We don't interfere in the workings of PAC, or that of any committee in the Dewan Rakyat,” he was quoted as saying by portal MalaysiaNow.
Azhar was responding to DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang’s question about alleged delays in tabling the report.
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On Saturday (Aug 6), Lim had asked why the report was not tabled in March when the last PAC meeting on the LCS project was on March 8.
He also asked why the report was not tabled on July 18, the first day of the Dewan Rakyat meeting, but was only tabled on the last day, Aug 4.
Azhar said Lim, the Iskandar Puteri MP, should have asked his DAP colleague and PAC chairman Wong Kah Woh why the report was not tabled earlier.
"I find it odd that Lim is utterly in the dark about it. After all, the PAC chairman is from DAP. All he (had to do) was to call his party mate and ask him why the report was not presented... earlier rather than spewing allegations,” he said.
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He added that he never interfered in the affairs of PAC or any other parliamentary select committee.
"These committees are now functioning with meaningful checks and balances," he said.
"It is thus regrettable that a senior MP would make baseless allegations and insinuate that either I or the Dewan Rakyat management was 'procrastinating' or complicit in trying to engineer a delay in the tabling of the PAC report on the combat ship to avoid scrutiny of the said report,” he added.
