SENATE The government is studying the need to amend the law including imposing a heavier penalty on elected representatives who resign on unreasonable grounds.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Shahidan Kassim said the proposal was among the matters being studied as the existing penalty of a five-year ban on the offending representative from an election was not prohibitive enough.

“Although the government does not have the right to stop an elected representative from doing so, all proposals to prevent such acts are being studied by the government,” he said at the Dewan Negara sitting in Kuala Lumpur today.

He was replying to a supplementary question from Senator Ahamat @ Ahamad Yusop who wanted to know if the Election Commission proposed to issue new guidelines to prevent elected representatives from resigning without reasonable grounds.

Shahidan stressed that such unforced resignations would only result in the government incurring the additional cost of financing a by-election.

- Bernama