Fong Po Kuan
| Fong Po Kuan 冯宝君 |
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|---|---|
| Member of the Malaysian Parliament for Batu Gajah |
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In office 29 November 1999 – 2013 |
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| Preceded by | Yeong Chee Wah |
| Succeeded by | V. Sivakumar |
| Majority | 24,627 |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
15 September 1973 Perak, Malaysia |
| Political party | DAP – Pakatan Rakyat |
| Spouse(s) | Tan Chen Choon (陈正春) |
| Occupation | Politician |
| Website | pokuan |
Fong Po Kuan (simplified Chinese: 冯宝君; traditional Chinese: 馮寶君; pinyin: Féng Bǎo Jūn; born 15 September 1973) is a Malaysian politician from the Democratic Action Party (DAP) political party. She is able to communicate in Chinese, English, and Malay. She did her STPM in Anglo Chinese School, Ipoh in 1992. After that she attended the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) from 1993 to 1997, and graduated with a law degree.
In the 1999 Malaysian general election, Fong won the Batu Gajah parliamentary seat in the Dewan Rakyat, and became the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) in Malaysia. She won 19,867 out of 38,774 votes, winning by a majority of 2,071 with 67.5% turnout. During her first term, she was suspended for six months from Parliament without wages or allowances for criticising the Speaker of the House. Her suspension was unique in that the Speaker had waived the seven-day notice period required to raise the issue, and that the matter was never brought to the Parliamentary Committee of Privileges. The 83 MPs, all from the Speaker's party, who voted for suspension only constituted 43% of parliament; while this was a majority of those present in the hall, it did not have a simple majority of the total number of MPs. The suspension was widely seen to be vindictive.
In 2003, Fong inquired in parliament why she had been compelled to wear the tudung for her graduation ceremony at IIUM. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education, Mahadzhir Mohammad Khir, stated wearing the tudung was encouraged but not mandatory. A year later, the IIUM Senate made it compulsory for female students to wear the tudung to their convocation ceremony.
In 2005, having noticed a few non-Muslim women wearing the tudung in the gallery, she raised a point of order about whether wearing the tudung was compulsory in Parliament. It was not.
Fong initially decided not to defend her seat in the 2008 general election. After DAP leaders asked her to reconsider, she finally agreed to run for re-election, retaining her Batu Gajah parliamentary seat with a majority of 24,627.
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