MAY 25 — Here’s a couple things I learned reading the news last week. It’s perfectly normal to rain spiders in Australia and minister Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim thinks voters don’t need to know how their elected MPs vote in Parliament.

According to the minister in charge of Parliamentary affairs, there is no need to publish on the Parliament website how each MP voted for Bills and motions in the House. MPs know how each other voted through the Votes and Proceedings report and that’s good enough, he said.

Now this is a strange statement to think about. Consider the logic behind the proposal. The point of knowing how your elected MPs vote is so you can know how your wishes and interests are being represented in Parliament. 

Imagine you want free nasi lemak every morning and your local MP votes against a Bill to give every Malaysian a free packet every day. Naturally you would want to know why – the MP is supposed to represent your voice. Why is he denying you free nasi lemak when you think it’s a good idea?

Of course, there are many perfectly legitimate reasons not to give free nasi lemak to everyone every day, but the point is the MP should explain to you why it’s a bad idea if you want to know. 

And you can only know to ask this question if you know the MP you voted for decided you should suffer by not having free nasi lemak every day.

Unfortunately Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim did not clarify much on his statement. However, the good minister may have his own reasons for saying we don’t need to know how our elected MPs vote in Parliament. In fact we can easily think of several potential reasons:

1. Hassle, hassle

So how would the system have worked? One may be excused for thinking it is simply a matter of recording which MPs were in attendance when a particular Bill was being voted on and whether they each said yay or nay. Then collate these in an excel sheet or something and put it up on the Parliament website.

Ah, but maybe that would be too simplistic. Of course the rakyat would expect a certain standard of transparency, accuracy and normal bureaucratic complication of a simple procedure. 

So the data must be compiled by an independent third party which must be selected via competitive bidding process.

(That means open tender.)

And then the data must be verified before publication to ensure no mis-interpretation. We don’t want “yay” to become”‘nay” or vice versa. So that means an independent audit process which may take a few weeks. 

At the end of it all, we’d probably have forgotten that the nasi lemak Bill existed anyway and bought our own nasi lemak, so who voted for and against it may not even matter anymore.

(And a bonus positive: with so many worries like GST, traffic jams and finding good nasi lemaks, who has time to look at this anyway?)

2. Too late for 11MP?

Another potential reason is maybe the suggestion was mooted to close to the 11^th Malaysia Plan announcement. In other words, too late already to work it into the grand five-year design.

Of course one may be excused for wondering why this simple thing needs to be in the 11MP. Can’t we just add it to the normal operation activities of Parliament and whoever runs the Parliament website? 

Or just make the Votes and Proceedings report publicly available for download? Sounds simple enough – the information is already collected for the report anyway.

Again, probably too simplistic. We’re talking about Parliament here, folks. Where even the presence (or lack) of proper latrines and high-class furnishing in the appropriate places can stir up controversy. 

If you’re going to change how Parliament works by publicising who votes for what, will it be a legitimate change if not captured in a five-year national development plan? 

Probably not. Without accompanying acronyms and buzzwords, the rakyat probably won’t believe you’re seriously going to give them free nasi lemak every day. Same goes for making MPs’ voting data public.

3. Think positive

Here’s a third possibility for Datuk Seri Shahidan’s statement that we don’t need to know how our elected MPs vote in Parliament: it’s not very nice to be suspicious. 

Let’s face it. Our culture here in the East emphasises the virtue of thinking well of others. Malays call this bersangka baik. Imagine how your elected MP might feel if you start questioning his every move in Parliament. 

He’d be so stressed out with our never-ending questions in the name of accountability, which is a pity since the job already comes with so much stress, isn’t it?

So perhaps the statement was intended to bring us back to the virtues of trust a la honour system. Imagine if your boss pays a few hundred ringgit to send you to a GST seminar so you can learn how your company will be affected. 

Normally you’d be expected to come back with useful information and be able to brief your co-workers on what you learned.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead, your boss tells you this:

“Dear Khairie, I’m glad to see you back from the seminar in fine shape. Don’t worry about briefing us about what you learned — I have complete faith that you and the other participants of that seminar know what you have learned and that is all that matters to us. By the way I’m tripling your salary starting next month.”

You feel less stress and less pressure to soak up everything from the seminar, which puts you in a better mood.

And of course you would never sneak off to other places when you were supposed to be at the seminar on company time and expense, would you? That’s just silly to think about.

These are only three possibilities, of course. Who knows what’s on Shahidan’s mind.

But then again, maybe we should all think positive and think well of his intentions...

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.