KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 22): Low attendance of Members of Parliament (MPs), including Cabinet ministers, at the Dewan Rakyat does not seem to bother Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, as the Langkawi MP said his fellow colleagues are busy attending overseas meetings and their own private matters.

"We have discussed about it in Cabinet meeting, we found that sometimes the ministers have to be overseas, as there are many international meetings that they need to attend.

"As for normal MPs, they have their own issues to deal with, although they are not in Dewan sometimes, they are in the Parliament building, so [the Speaker] can ring the bell and ask them to attend Dewan Rakyat sitting [when there is a lack of quorum]," he said.

Dr Mahathir also said lack of quorum happens in many governments, and the opposition bringing this issue up is merely for political reason.

"This happens in any government. There was once I went to the US Congress, sometimes there was only one person talking, or two, but they didn't bring up the issue of quorum. Sometimes quorum issue [was] brought up due to political reason," he said.

The Dewan Rakyat was halted for a minute last week due to lack of quorum, meaning there were less than 26 MPs present in the hall, out of 222 of them.