JASIN – The select committee of the Melaka legislative assembly will meet to determine if Rembia assemblyman Datuk Muhammad Jailani Khamis should vacate the seat.
State assembly Speaker Datuk Ibrahim Durum said until a decision is made, Jailani is considered a Barisan Nasional (BN) representative.
Ibrahim said the meeting will be held by no later than next Friday.
“I cannot take the words of people… who claim that he (Jailani) is a member of the party (PAS), when the one saying this is a party leader himself.
“I have to bring (this matter) to the assembly’s select committee so that we can decide on Jailani’s position and after that we will know what action should be taken by the assembly based on the results of the meeting,” Ibrahim told reporters at an event for local entrepreneurs in Sungai Rambai, here today, Bernama reports.
Jailani’s political allegiance is in dispute as the opposition, PAS, claims him to be a member since June last year, but only announced his change of party membership this year. He won the Rembia state seat in 2018, then as a PKR candidate, and retained it in the 2021 Melaka state election as an Umno-Barisan Nasional (BN) member.
On July 16, PAS secretary-general Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan, who is also Perikatan Nasional (PN) deputy secretary-general, announced Jailani had been accepted into PAS on June 10, 2023.
Jailani’s Umno membership was suspended for six years in September last year on charges of sabotage against the party by intentionally attending a PN event in Bakri, Johor, during the Johor state election the preceding month in August.
When Takiyuddin announced Jailani’s PAS membership last month, he said the anti-hopping law did not apply as the Melaka legislative assembly only enacted its state anti-hopping law in July 2023, a month after PAS accepted Jailani as a member.
As such, Takiyuddin said, the Rembia seat need not be declared vacant.
BN leads the state government in Melaka, where together with ally Pakatan Harapan, has 25 out of 28 seats in the legislative assembly – without Jailani.
Jailani’s defection to PAS would bring the number of opposition members in the Melaka assembly to three. – August 11, 2024