GHANA: A bilateral meeting took place between the President of the Malaysian Dewan Negara Senator Tan Sri Datuk Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar and the Australian President of the Senate Senator Hon. Sue Lines during the 66th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference here.
According to a press release, the meeting was joined by other Malaysian delegates, including Minister of National Unity Datuk Aaron Ago Dagang, Senator Datuk Wira Dr Mohd Hatta Md Rami, Senator Isaiah D Jacob and Datuk Seri Dr Noraini Ahmad.
During the meeting, Wan Junaidi was informed of the upcoming study tour to the Australia Parliament in the third week of October 2023 by the Deputy President of the Dewan Negara Senator Datuk Nur Jazlan Tan Sri Mohamed.
The latter gave a comprehensive briefing on the purposes of the trip which were to learn about the Australian’s committee system, parliamentary process of keeping the Cabinet accountability, monitoring of the executive’s action and such other relevant parliamentary law, rules of the House and ethics for conducts of the members of the Parliament in meetings.
Meanwhile, during the parliamentary conference, Wan Junaidi presented a paper entitled “20 Years of the Latimer House Principles on the Separation of Powers: Is it Working?”.
He highlighted that the enforcement of the Malaysia’s Federal Constitution since 1957 had a clear separation of powers in its execution, namely, the branches of Executive, Legislature and Judiciary.
He also informed that plans were underway to reintroduce the Parliamentary Service Act and the Houses of Parliament (Privileges and Powers) Act; the soonest would be at the upcoming sitting in October which would coincide with the tabling of Budget Session 2024 for Malaysia.
Wan Junaidi said these Acts would equip the Parliament as the Legislature branch with the legal, procedural and administrative infrastructure to fully realise its functions and duties as one of these branches of separated powers in the enactment of the Federal Constitution.
