Can PKR’s ‘shadow cabinet’ work?
WONG CHIN HUAT, MOCS
On Friday, PKR announced a line-up of 19 parliamentary spokespersons led by PKR president Anwar Ibrahim and the party’s advisory council chairperson Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail to shadow the cabinet and 17 MPs as assistant spokespersons.
This division of labour is effectively PKR’s “shadow cabinet”, without the name.
While this has met the call from civil society for the opposition to have a shadow cabinet to effectively check and balance the executive, three questions have also been raised against the move.
First, will it work when the previous attempts have failed?
Second, is the line-up fitting in terms of competence and diversity?
Third, and most importantly, why is it a PKR instead of a Pakatan Harapan or Pakatan Harapan Plus line-up?
These are legitimate questions that deserve serious answers from PKR, Harapan and Harapan Plus as well as external scrutiny. As a staunch advocate of a shadow cabinet, I will volunteer to do the latter.
Can it work when previous attempts have failed?
Two attempts to shadow the government had been made before this, but both failed miserably.
In September 2018, Malaysia’s inaugural “shadow cabinet”by the official opposition was announced by BN, with 52 of its 53 MPs (of which 26 were shadow ministers), with Najib as the only MP left out.
Similar to PKR’s “assistant spokespersons”, this round, all “backbenchers”, were made deputies.
