While the public has demanded transparency in how their lawmakers vote on controversial bills and motions tabled in Parliament, the government however feels the present procedure is sufficient.

"Bloc voting results are later recorded in the votes and proceedings details where  the number of votes for and against are recorded," said Shahidan Kassim ( photo ), Minister in the Prime Minister's Department said.

The vote tally is only distributed to lawmakers only and this is adequate, he said in a parliamentary written reply yesterday.

"At this stage, there is no need to upload the vote tally onto the Parliament website ," he said.

He was responding to Lim Lip Eng (DAP-Segambut) who asked if the government will upload detailed voting results of bills and motions to the Parliament website.

"(This is to) ensure the accountability of MPs to their voters as the rakyat has a right to know how their representatives votes" said Lim.

His question came in wake of the BN government bulldozing controversial bills through in Parliament resulting in the public demanding to know who voted for what.

Wee hours of the morn'

Among the bills rammed through was the Prevention of Crime (Amendment) Act 2013 (Poca) which allows a two-year detention without trial and  passed in Parliament in October 2013.

Only 66 opposition lawmakers were present to oppose it. The public was outraged and demanded to know who were the absentees.

The last parliament session also saw bloc voting take place for the Sedition (Amendment) Bill 2015 and The Prevention of Terrorism Bill (2015) (Pota).

The government sought to impose a harsher penalties through the amendment of the exisiting Sedition Act.

The Sedition (Amendments) Bill 2015 went on to the second reading stage with a vote of 108  for to 79 against and was passed after 14 hours of debate.

Malaysiakini published a special report listing out the 108 MPs who voted  for the Sedition bill.

Opposition lawmakers failed in their bid to stop Pota from being passed through in the wee hours of April 7 after a bloc vote .