Five DAP lawmakers were suspended six months by the state legislature today for staging a walkout yesterday in protest of the Speaker’s decision to allow media photographers in the chambers when a Barisan Nasional (BN) lawmaker accused Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng of an affair with a former aide.
Lim’s wife, Betty Chew, was among the five DAP assemblymen suspended for the walkout.
The Penang chief minister had earlier today denied the allegation while taking a swipe at his political rivals in the MCA by asserting that “Lim Guan Eng is not Chua Soi Lek.”
Lim’s barb was made in reference to MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek being forced to admit in 2008 that he had an extramarital affair after video recordings of his tryst were publicly leaked.
On Monday, Malacca MCA chief Gan Tian Loo, the assemblyman for Duyong, was allowed by Speaker Datuk Othman Muhamad to challenge Chew to answer allegations that her husband had an affair and that she had assaulted the former aide over the matter.
The allegations had surfaced on a blog believed to be sponsored by MCA supporters.
The blog was set up last year and primarily contains attacks against the DAP and other opposition parties. It is anonymously written.
Yesterday’s walkout took place after state DAP chief Goh Leong San, the Kesidang assemblyman, asked the Speaker why he was allowing news photographers to take pictures inside the House during Monday’s proceeding when the allegations against Lim and Chew was being made by MCA’s Gan.
Othman said that such coverage was permitted and he had confidence in the ethics and the credibility of the mainstream media.
The five opposition lawmakers then staged a walkout.
They will now be barred from the next proceeding scheduled to be held this October.
Goh later called the suspension “grossly unfair and absurd”.
