Sin Chew Daily

The PMO announced that a 5-day special parliament sitting would be held from July 26. The first sitting after eight months of parliament suspension is, weirdly, a little short. And from the content to be discussed, it seems that the time allocated for just a government "briefing session" should be more than enough.

The first day will be the opening by the King, and the following four days will be to discuss and amend the necessary laws to conduct hybrid parliament meetings, while the lawmakers are briefed about the national recovery plan and deliberate on the Emergency ordinance now still in force.

From the standpoint of the rakyat and media, if the 5-day special parliament sitting is still stuck in the power struggle among political parties in the country, then it is better just to cancel this whole thing, as it will not help much when the nation is struggling under the weight of the pandemic.

However, if the special sitting is to discuss about the NRP and "anti-virus measures implemented during the Emergency", then the 5-day time slot is invariably too rushy, as there is only time for the government side to present its report and not much time for elected reps to raise a question. In the absence of any discussion or debate, we can't expect any constructive solutions to come out from this "special sitting".

As such, we believe there is going to be a "sequel" to the 5-day parliament sitting beginning July 26, which has been reluctantly called to meet the royal demand that the parliament reconvene before August 1, and to gag the opposition lawmakers and general public repeatedly demanding that the parliament reconvene soonest..

In other words, this arrangement has been made to please the royalty, opposition and rakyat while still able to buy time. But, will such a special sitting be of any substance at all?

From when the Emergency ordinance was declared on January 12 to when the parliament eventually gets to sit again later this month, the entire country has been embroiled in issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine, lockdown, economy and the people's livelihoods.

If the MPs must grade the anti-virus measures implemented during the emergency period, we are afraid the outcome would be disheartening. So, the PN government has to come up with another strategy by glorifying the high vaccination rate achieved and slowing daily new infections in an attempt to buy time and gloss over the government's otherwise lackluster performance in fighting the virus, paving the way for a more favorable "sequel" to the 5-day parliament sitting later this month.

No doubt we are currently at the worst of time when it comes to dealing with the virus. Indeed, we have seen the worst and it just can't get any worse than that. This explains why the PN government has opted to hold the parliament sittings "in stages" by first stabilizing the situation of the pandemic before picking the right timing to officially start the actual sittings.

For the 352 days from January 25 last year to January 12 this year when the Emergency decree was announced, the country saw a cumulative total of 141,533 COVID-19 infections at a daily average of 402 cases, and 559 deaths (daily average 1.59).

And for the 174 days after the Emergency was declared until July 5, we reported as many as 643,506 new cases (daily average 3,698) and 5,015 deaths (daily average 28.8). In other words, we had 9.2 times more new cases and 18.1 times more deaths, after the Emergency was enforced, compared to 2.07 and 2.12 times globally during the same period of time.

Looking at these numbers, it is very obvious that our anti-virus measures during the Emergency have been a complete flop. We were ranked 51 out of 53 countries and territories in Bloomberg's June COVID-19 resilience score, outdoing only the Philippines and Argentina. This is definitely not something the PN administration would want to discuss in the parliament.

Emergency was declared with the objective of what PM Muhyiddin then claimed allowing the government to focus on the fight against the coronavirus. It was endorsed by His Majesty and indeed we the rakyat were placing a lot of hope on it.

But the thing is, why is the pandemic getting from bad to worse now that the government can concentrate on fighting the virus in the absence of a major "distraction"? If we've got the policies right and the authorities were working hard for it, we shouldn't have performed any worse than the global average, right?

Only the PN people know whether the so-called "special sitting" is the government's time-buying tactic.

Of course, it is our hope that all quarters will stop their fights during such a crucial moment that sees many people succumbed to the virus on a daily basis. It is time to seriously ponder why we have failed so badly and whether adjustments should be made to the existing policies. It's also time to review the feasibility of the NRP and hope our wise representatives will talk something positive out of the August House and deliver us out of our miseries.