KUALA LUMPUR, March 4 — Statutory declarations (SD) from MPs supporting a prime minister candidate is an unreliable method to measure the support a person has in Parliament, Datuk Shad Saleem Faruqi has pointed out today.

Speaking at a forum titled “Checkmate! Death of Democracy in Malaysia”, the constitutional law expert pointed out that a politician may simply change his mind the next day and throw his lot with another candidate.

“Today I give my SD to support X. Tomorrow I change my mind and support someone else. It’s unreliable. On MPs hopping parties during the political crisis, I spoke to some of the MPs.

“Some say they gave their SDs in support of one person that day but then the situation changed, new candidates came up or someone backed down so therefore, they changed their mind.

“So, their SDs collapsed and was totally unreliable,” said Shad on a forum organised by National Human Rights Youth Society’s (Hakam Youth) and was livestreamed on their Facebook page.

However, the learned academic pointed out that despite changing SDs on a day-to-day basis is unethical, there is nothing illegal regarding it.

The forum discussed Malaysia’s political turmoil last week which began with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad resigning from his post as prime minister leading to the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration and the formation of a “backdoor” government led by Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

Dr Mahathir had claimed that he had the support of 112 MPs, and should therefore become the prime minister rather than Muhyiddin.

He also said that he was blocked from an audience with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to indicate his position.

Muhyiddin was instead sworn in on Sunday, and Pakatan Harapan is currently urging from a Parliament sitting immediately in order to table a no-confidence vote against the Perikatan Nasional government.

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2020/03/04/using-sds-to-indicate-support-for-pm-candidates-unreliable-academic-shad-sa/1843454