Pejuang to join Parliament sitting but staying will depend, says Dr M

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad today said that MPs from his Pejuang bloc will attend the special Parliament sitting at the end of the month “at least at the beginning”, with their continued attendance contingent on what is discussed during the session.

Speaking at a press conference, he said they would join the sitting at the early stage as they wanted to see “how the government conducts the meeting”.

“If we find that it is just an explanation of government policies and just a briefing, we may decide at the time to leave the Dewan.

“But we haven’t fully decided on this yet because we want to see how the government conducts the sitting,” he said.

He said Pejuang also wants to show the people that the decision to leave the session would be because they do not consider it a Parliament sitting.

“If we don’t attend, people might think that we asked for Parliament to sit and when it sits, we don’t attend.

“But we want to show that this is not a sitting of Parliament. That is important,” he said.

Mahathir previously said any decision by the party to attend the upcoming Parliament sitting would depend on whether the speaker allows them to debate their plans.

“We want to know whether we will be allowed to debate and propose in the sitting,” he said.

“If we are allowed to propose our plan, we will attend the sitting. If not, we will decide whether to attend. We have yet to decide on this.”