Your organising team have been doing initial planning with discussions through an e-group created specifically for this initiative.
This team will meet on Friday, 3rd August, 2007 in KL to finalise the details.
I have already noted some of the suggestions that have come in by way of comments and I wll put these before the organising team for them to consider.
This is your event and your celebration.
Therefore, I want to offer you a say in the programme for that evening.
However, instead of sending in your suggestions as a comment, could I ask you to please send them in by e-mail to thepeoplesparliament@gmail.com. This will make it easier for me to collate and put before the organising team.
I hope you will also understand if any suggestions are not taken up. The organising team is working on very short notice and may not be able to take all ideas on board. What I will assure you is that all suggestions will be considered.
I hope to be able to put up a full notice of the Bangsa Malaysia Merdeka get-together by Monday, 6th August, 2007.
Your organising team awaits your ideas.
The People's Parliament 
malaysianagenda
August 2, 2007
The Bangsa Malaysia Organising Team should make their own terminologies to develop Bangsa Malaysia in a way more in tuned with the aspirations of All Malaysians. This means that the traditional classification and ‘labelling’ based on Ethnicity and language should be discarded and more emphasis on the struggles and evolution of Malaysians based on common challenges should be the language to be encouraged. Taking the universal values inherent among the Founding Fathers as our starting point can help give direction to the process of identifying and documenting the evolution of Bangsa Malaysia.
We should be looking at the various stages of our struggles against external and internal challenges. Issues like fight against povedty and raising the economic well being of All Malaysians. The character dimension of all who contributed should be emphasised and not the ethnicity. Bangsa Malaysia is not a programme to create a hegemony of any one race, one culture or beliefs. It should be about the characteristics of leaders and ordinary citizens being bridge-builders through the various joint-efforts in facing all the challenges since pre- and post-Merdeka.
Keeping in mind the varied orientations that Malaysians undergo, the different focus by different citizens should provide a rich and diverse characteristics of a Nation still under-construction, with the common goal of creating Loving, Caring & Productive Malaysians from all sectors of life. There are numerous examples to choose from. When we put aside our political and ideological agendas, we will be able to see and experience the Unity in Diversity along with all the richness that’s inherent in most Malaysians. Singling out examples with identificaton by ethnicity should be totally discarded. Focus on what have/are/and will build a United, Just, Democratic and Progressive Nation capable of meeting the Challenges of Globalisation, is enough. Too much time has been given to non-essential agumentative issues. We need to re-direct our energies for positive actions on Nation Building and not just highlithing the shortcomings of others.
alliedmartster
August 2, 2007
Malaysian Agenda, great points for all to note.
Hopefully, we will be able to meet up at this do, to be announced.
This is our first step, and having the right steps will be most important. I am not even sure if this celebration will lead to anything, cos if history has it, Malaysians are famous for starting something and then dropping off. I am certainly not referring to Haris, as his energy is certainly admirable.
It is us as second stringers, how far and long can we go once we have started the ball rolling?
I have already been disappointed by people not wanting to fight for their own rights! But lets take this celebration as the first step, shall we?
Kawan, I have a good feel about this get-together.
Keep the faith.
guuunner
August 2, 2007
Are we going to have this event at other places other than KL?
guuunner
August 2, 2007
By the way, it’s interesting to know if the corrupted UMNO government would block this event. I thought they are having an official event too somewhere at Dataran Merdeka? I thought they just recently issued a statement to the private sectors for not organising similar events for fear very few people would turn up for the official event organized by the corrupted UMNO government?
ghostline
August 2, 2007
Hello Haris,
I don’t really know how this will fit into the “Bangsa Malaysia Merdeka” celebrations, but it seems singularly appropriate to bring this matter up in “The People’s Parliament”. I apologise in advance for taking up a huge chunk of your comments space.
I have been working on a draft of a “citizen’s” revision of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia, which I believe is in dire need of updating. Provisionally named “The Citizens’ Constitution”, I am working to prepare the draft and to bring it up for discussion with the civil society community before the end of August. Due to heavy work commitments on my part, there is still much work to be done for even the first draft, but I would like to contribute part of the preamble statement, which I believe encapsulates the attributes of the progressive, secular and egalitarian multi-cultural country we are fighting for.
I would like to first state that I have no formal legal training (I apologise in advance for any inaccurate legal terminology), and have only recently begun to study the Federal Constitution in depth. In doing so I find that one of the first weaknesses of the Constitution is that it is written in such opaque and convoluted legal language that it is virtually inaccessible to the vast majority of citizens.
IMHO, one of the basic tenets of a national constitution is that it is written for the people (who are its ultimate owners); therefore, it follows that the text and intent of the Constitution should be readily legible and comprehensible to the majority of educated citizens. In its present written form the Federal Constitution of Malaysia must surely test the perseverance of even the most experienced of legal experts, if I may say so.
The Constitution is also badly outdated in parts: several long-outdated provisions such as the ISA, OSA and Emergency Ordinances which were developed to combat the Communist Emergency are ‘conveniently’ still in force, thus allowing fascist elements in government to abuse these legal provisions for the purpose of silencing the opposition and suppressing independent thought.
After 50 years, I believe that it is time that the Constitution should be comprehensively updated and re-written in both English and BM in order to clarify its language while preserving the spirit of the original provisions (where no amendments are necessary).
For the reasons above, I believe that the Constitution must be revised, and it should be revised by a cross-sectional citizens’ group with the interests of the people at heart.
I do not consider the present government to be up to this task.
Therefore, we must take it upon ourselves to undertake the revision of the Constitution. Broadly, the objectives of the citizens’ revision are:
(1) to reinforce and enshrine in unambiguous terms the secular and liberal democratic character of the Malaysian nation;
(2) to reinforce and enshrine in unambiguous terms the equality of all citizens irrespective of gender, race or religion;
(3) to remove any and all provisions enshrining discriminatory policies or which run counter to principle (2) above;
(4) to enshrine (responsible) freedom of expression;
(5) to enshrine in unambiguous terms the principle of the strict separation of powers of state;
(6) to enshrine a provision for an independent body to oversee governmental accountability;
There are many more, of course.
In the effort to re-draft the Federal Constitution, I am primarily referencing the Turkish Constitution (available at http://www.byegm.gov.tr/mevzuat/anayasa/anayasa-ing.htm) (and am also researching other best-practice national constitutions), which we will immediately see is no less complex but which is written in clear, direct English.
I consider the Turkish Constitution to be a modern and progressive model for a diverse and multi-cultural country. While neither the Turkish Constitution nor the actual practice of it is without flaws, the document itself is valuable for the fact that it enshrines the secular nature of the Turkish nation AND the equality of all citizens irrespective of gender, race or religion.
BN has clearly forgotten (and refuses to remember) the principles of good governance. Over the years, BN has done its damned best to politicise and corrupt the civil service, universities, judiciary, security agencies and military. With a few notable exceptions, they have largely succeeded. The corruption has even insinuated itself into the Constitution.
We urgently need to undo the corruption wrought by BN, and perhaps we can begin at the Bangsa Malaysia Merdeka gathering, where we can redefine and clarify the original principles and ultimate objectives of our independence.
I hope that one day, we will be able to sum up the complex situation of Malaysian citizenship as simply as:
“We are Malaysian citizens: We are free; we are equal; we are friends.”
31 August 2007.
I will see you there.
I am personally not in favour of tinkering with the FC, other than doing the necessary to undo the dangers inherent in Article 160B and to reverse the amendment to Article 121(1) ( please note that this is not the same as Article 121(1A) which, to my mind, is somewhat innocuous ) and some other dangerous amendments that have crept in due to a ‘sleeping’ parliament.
My honest view is that the FC on the whole was a fairly decent document of destiny that our forefathers left us with. It may need elucidation, but that is what we have lawyers and judges for.
Look forward to meeting you at the get-together.
johnleemk
August 2, 2007
Haris, I cannot say I agree re the FC. I find even the original Merdeka Constitution to be horribly inadequate in protecting the “fundamental liberties” of Malaysians. The ideal version of our current Constitution, IMO, is the original Reid Commission draft (prior to its revision after heavy criticisms from the Pakistani representative on the Commission). (This draft of course is not entirely politically feasible, since it did not establish Islam as the official religion. In other respects it was an adequate constitution.)
But on the whole, I favour a rewrite of the Constitution. The opacity of the legal jargon is one issue, but what I find most troubling is the lack of any statement of principles for the nation. It is common practice among legislators in other countries to state their intentions and principles in the legislation they draw up, so it strikes me as very perturbing that our judges must guess at the intent of our founding fathers.
By having a proper preamble, there would be no room for doubt as to whether we are meant to be a secular or Islamic state, whether we are all equal or some of us are more “equal” than others, and so forth. I think it would have been a lot harder for the courts to be cowed by the judiciary prior to the 1988 constitutional crisis if our constitution had not given them an easy route to capitulation by permitting an excessively literalist interpretation.
Ideally, I would ensure that the preamble is entrenched to guarantee that the Constitution cannot run counter to the preamble, and that the government will have its work cut out for it to amend the preamble. I’ve had enough of the courts’ nonsense that the government should be allowed to amend the Constitution as much as it likes – we need to fix the procedure to ensure the spirit of our Constitution is never lost.