KUALA LUMPUR (July 1, 2009) : Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timur) wants parliament to convene an emergency sitting to pass amendments to the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 not relating to Islam.
He said the announcement of Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz on Tuesday that laws on conversion would be indefinitely put on hold pending a decision of the Conference of Rulers was a great disappointment and setback in the resolution of such a “burning issue”.
“I call on the cabinet on Friday to take a bold decision on matters arising from unilateral conversions … these must be resolved without any delay,” Lim said.
“The Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act has nothing to do with Islam, and I call on the cabinet to make a decision so that parliament can convene an emergency sitting in July or August, specially to deal with this problem which has become so polarising and dividing,” he said at the parliament lobby.
Lim said that when parliament adjourns tomorrow, it would sit again only three and a half months later, and “I would not know how many conversions will take place in three and a half months and create family pain, children’s agony and national disunity”.
On the issue of the eviction of residents of Kampung Buah Pala in Penang to make way for development, Lim said former chief minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon should speak up on whether he would make amends for his decisions in relation to the village by securing a federal government grant to enable the Penang government to resolve the issue.
“The state government is now caught in a vice created by Koh’s (now minister in the Prime Minister Department) administration, although it had prevented the eviction of the residents since the middle of last year,” Lim said.
He demanded Koh explain why the former state government had approved the sale of the land to Koperasi Pegawai-Pegawai Kerajaan Pulau Pinang at the low premium of RM6.42 million and later halved this to RM3.21 million.
Lim said Koh must state why the former state government had not consulted the residents before alienating the 2.6ha of land, on which a 14-storey luxury condominium is now to be built.
“It had been said that Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng could res-olve the issue with ‘the stroke of a pen’. Yes, it can be resolved, but it will involve compensation for the RM150 million project.
“Can the state government afford such compensation?”
On the withholding of a RM660 million payment to the Port Klang Free Zone’s turnkey developer, Kuala Dimensi Sdn Bhd, by the Port Klang Authority (PKA), Lim said: “I welcome the decision, but if Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat claims credit for it, he must be prepared to take responsibility for all the other decisions of the PKA board.”
He reminded Ong that he (Ong) still had a day before parliament adjourned to get motions passed to refer all concerned to the Privileges Committee to determine who had actually misled the House.