Sunday, June 20, 2010

Tian Chua RM2000 fine - will be there be a new by election ?

Tian Chua of PKR who was elected Batu MP in 2008, was charged under Section 32 of the Penal Code with intentionally causing injury to a police constable on duty. Last October, the Kuala Lumpur Magistrate's Court had sentenced Chua to six months in jail and fined him RM3,000. 
Upon his appeal, Justice Ghazali Cha reduced the fine from RM 3000 to RM 2000 as his intention was to avoid a  by-election for the parliamentary seat Batu  in Kuala Lumpur.
I was surprised to hear about the judge's decision as  I don't think the judge should be making decision based on political needs even though his decision now favor the opposition.

DAP's Karpal Singh had immediate said that Tian Chua should be disqualified as a MP as the fine is not less than RM2000. The learned judge should have imposed a fine of RM1999 then to avoid such contention of interpretation of " not less than RM2000". This was a suprised move by DAP and some eyebrows were raised over this call by Karpal Singh.

On the BN's side, some politicians is taking this an opportunity to show there is a split in the Pakatan Rakyat and that DAP is not in agreement with PKR ? Some had view this as a strategy by BN to disqualify Tian Chua from standing again in the next Gebneral Election. The disqualification will be raised when Tian Chua submits his nomination papers then and BN will obtain a walkover victory.

I disagree to this analysis as I feel this is more of an orchestrated move by DAP to force BN into holding another by-election to discount off Najib's rising popularity ( based on Merdeka poll taken recently ). PKR/DAP knows the Batu seat is their stronghold and the chance of winning again the seat is 101 % certain, with a forecasted bigger majority than previous March 2008 results. Najib will try to avoid to this by-election knowing it will not be in BN's favor especially with a bigger loss anticipated.

Nazri had now said this matter of by election should be decided by the Election Commission and not by Parliment - the ball is now passed in between the 2 parties. It'd be interesting to see the final decision.

Today PAS MP of Shah Alam , Khalid Samad had rubbished talk of a rift between DAP and its Pakatan Rakyat allies over the possible disqualification of Batu MP Tian Chua for his 'cop biting' conviction. The video below shows his reasoning and  thrashing of BN's " achievements".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IirGwJCsZUU&feature=player_embedded#!

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