Malaysia is considering making it illegal for lawmakers to switch sides amid reports the opposition was trying to lure ruling party defectors in an attempt to unseat the government, a minister said.
"To me, these [defectors] have no integrity and I hope the government can formulate a special law," de facto law minister Zaid Ibrahim told state news agency Bernama late on Saturday.
"It's high time that we have the anti-hopping law to stop such acts," Zaid, who is a minister in the prime minister's office tasked with judicial oversight, told Bernama.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's racially based Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition faced its worst ever election results on March 8, losing five states and its two-thirds majority in parliament to the opposition.
Emboldened by the results, opposition figurehead Anwar Ibrahim said that ruling coalition lawmakers from the eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island had contacted him to discuss switching sides.
The power bloc there could unseat the government if it changed hands.
But Sarawak parliamentarian Richard Riot has denied speculation amid media reports he would be the first lawmaker to defect to the opposition, Bernama said.
"Out of the blue I became a star but let me announce that it has never crossed my mind to move away from the BN. I am a BN man, voted in under the BN ticket and I will stay put with the BN," he told the news agency.
Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, the chief minister of Kelantan state, has come out in support of Zaid's proposal.
"[Such politicians] are not humans if they can be bought and sold like commodities," said Nik Aziz, also the spiritual adviser of the Islamic PAS party, which rules opposition-controlled Kelantan and neighboring Kedah state.
BN will have 140 lawmakers in the new 222-seat parliament, against 199 in the outgoing 219-seat parliament. The opposition alliance won 80 seats from just 19 previously.
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