YOURSAY | Water from the water treatment plants can be drunk. Not from the taps.

Xavier: Safe to drink water straight from tap

People Power: How can Water, Land, and Natural Resources Minister Dr Xavier Jayakumar say water is drinkable from the tap when it is so dirty at Petaling Jaya housing areas?

Every two weeks, we need to backwash the outside filters and each time the water is very muddy and with rusty colour.

Avis: Mr Minister, come and see the quality of water in Malacca. You need (to use) a few filters before the water can be consumed.

Falcon: It is super obvious that the commenters here know more about the quality and safety of drinking straight from the tap than a dentist who was made minister and whose performance, so far, is simply embarrassing.

Hopefully, in time, when the "dear leader" takes control, he will refrain from appointing him.

It is common knowledge that whatever comes straight from the tap is dirty. Prove me wrong please, as it costs me thousands to maintain a filtration system.

Vent: The minister appears to be doing a good job with his plans to clean up rivers. So let's give him that, considering that his only credential to date has been his undying support for Anwar Ibrahim.

And yes, the water coming from the treatment plant is safe. But the journey after that is anyone's guess so the quality of tap water depends on location and individual household safeguards, I guess.

By the way, it is safer or used to be safer to drink water off the tap in Nairobi than in London or Paris. Our water is also far safer than that in many other countries.

But we Malaysians have become such a whingy lot. We can’t be blamed though. Bad politics has taken its toll on us.

ABC123: Xavier is only half right. The water coming from the treatment plant is safe. But the pipes leading to your home are not. There is rust, sediment, and mould inside those pipes. The water tank in your house also has mould and bacteria.

Anyone who owns a water filter knows that when you clean the filter, the filter is brown. Or when you run the backwash, the water is dark brown from the rust, sand, sediment and mould.

The minister is telling the rakyat that this water is safe to drink and he drinks it every day. If someone shows him the dirty water filter, he might even say rust is good for your health.

Mano: We pay taxes to have the police force, yet we have to pay for private security charges. We pay taxes for a proper education system, yet we have to pay for extra tuition fees.

We pay taxes for treatment plants, yet we have to pay for (home) water filters. We can go on and on how the government has failed us.

Xavier, the water from the tap is safe to drink in Australia, UK, Norway, etc. Otherwise, there would be calls for heads to roll. Our country? I’m not sure. It is very doubtful when the backwash of the water filter is producing so much mud.

The existence of these companies and their thriving business is a blatant indicator that the government has failed to provide a basic necessity of the rakyat.

Providing clean, drinkable water direct from the tap is a duty of the government. Please ensure what happened under Umno/BN does not continue.

Anonymous Kamus: Water from the water treatment plants can be drunk. Not from the taps. Please be specific.

Anti-hopping law? Constitution ensures freedom of association, minister says

Spinnot: Many countries have some sort of anti-hopping law, including India, Israel, Portugal, Trinidad & Tobago, Belize, Bulgaria, Ghana, Guyana, Hungary, Lesotho, Mexico, Namibia, Romania, Samoa, Senegal, Suriname, Ukraine, Armenia, Bangladesh, Fiji, Gabon, Kenya, Macedonia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Thailand and Zimbabwe.

You mean all these countries' constitutions do not guarantee freedom of association? I know why certain parties in Malaysia are against anti-hopping law.

It was PAS-ruled Kelantan and PBS-ruled Sabah (both opposition states) that enacted state anti-hopping laws to prevent their elected representatives from crossing over to Umno. Needless to say, Umno challenged the two anti-hopping laws in court and won.

If Pakatan Harapan refuses to enact an anti-hopping law, it only means that certain parties in Harapan want to emulate Umno's practice and induce elected representatives of other parties to cross over.

Guyintheglass: The minister is correct. There is a Federal Court ruling that anti-hopping law is against the Constitution. Moreover, an elected representative cannot contest for the class of seat he/she had resigned from for five years.

So, asking a representative to resign and stand again for the same seat to test the people's support cannot come to pass.

One would need to change the electoral system to be completely party-based with the party appointing its members to Parliament, based on the percentage of votes it received.

If anyone resigns from the party, the seat occupied by him/her automatically becomes vacant for the party to make another appointment since that seat belongs to the party and not the individual.

Perhaps the Election Commission can look into this.

The Wakandan: What has the anti-hopping law got to do with guaranteed freedom of association? The honourable minister errs in this.

It does not stop the person concerned or anybody for that matter, to associate with anybody. It only means that since the person was elected under a party banner, it follows that he should resign from the party on which he was elected if he wants to switch to another party, since this is a parliamentary democracy.

Quigonbond: Which Election Commission is the law minister referring to? I sense there is an ulterior motive behind this current administration's reluctance to even consider or explore anti-hopping law.

The law minister also misrepresents the position. The anti-hopping law is not intended to prevent freedom of association. Its intent is to honour the wishes of the electorate with respect to their choice of a political party/coalition.

We can never know whether the voters voted for someone because they are with a certain party or if that candidate has sheer popularity.

Therefore, if the elected representative decides to leave a party (perhaps within six months to neutralise engineered staggered defection) to jointly vote with another party/coalition which results in a change of government, that resignation must also trigger a resignation from the elected post and for there to be a fresh contest, including from that same elected representative. Then, his or her individual popularity can be confirmed by the electorate.

The challenge for drafting such a law is how tight should it be. The scenario I've set out is probably the most specific and critical one. The other extreme is any resignation from the political party will trigger a fresh election.

This may require constitutional amendment, and should be part of our electoral reform, along with proportionate representation or otherwise equitable delineation, recall election for scandalous representatives, constitution and selection of the Election Commission, election offence enforcement, lowering voting age, easier/automatic registration of voters, opening up voting to Malaysians staying outside Malaysia, and linking the National Registration Department with the electoral roll to eliminate electoral fraud/phantom voting.

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