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Malaysian Parliamentary culture? Analyze this.

Friday, November 07, 2008
Comment by Dr. Azly Rahman

Watching this video gives me so many ideas on how some of our Parliamentarians have evolved to this stage, how much time is wasted in key national-level decision-making, and what then must we do to radically change the culture of debates. After 51 years of decolonization and given the ownership of politics, how have we evolved and what kind of culture have we created in our path to “greatness” and “world-classism”? I have written on this. In this video, a precious ten minutes is spent on asking each other to retract. There seems to be not much respect given to the chair of the debate. I do not believe Malaysian schools would allow this kind of debate to happen. In schools, Malaysians are taught the principles of debating and what to avoid. In schools, children are groomed to be good debaters so that the may run for public office and serve as Parliamentarians. What happened when they get to Parliament? Somewhere between being a school debater and a Parliamentarian, something happened in the case of many of those elected. What happened?