Dewan Rakyat speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia rubbished claims that Parliament is just a “rubber stamp” for the government.

If it is a rubber stamp, there would not have “robust debates” which go into the wee hours, he said in an interview with The Star.

“When you use that word “rubber stamp”, it means that whatever the government wants, it gets. But how are you going to reconcile that with what happens in Parliament?

“With the robust debates, utterances of unparliamentary words, debates until 4am, can you say it’s a rubber stamp? To me, rubber stamp means there is no debate at all,” he said.