WILL THE FACTS BE DISTORTED? Unity council wants Constitution taught to students, civil servants

The National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) will be proposing that Putrajaya introduce Constitution literacy programmes in schools, higher learning institutions and in the public sector, when submitting their first National Unity Report to the prime minister.

NUCC's Law and Policy committee member Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah (pic) said NUCC was asking the programme to be introduced to educate the public on the Federal Constitution, after the council realised that even those in decision-making levels have not understood it as well.

"We have stumbled on people who are part of the decision making process but do not understand the Constitution," he told reporters after speaking at a roundtable discussion on national unity with some 40 student leaders in Sunway University today.

The objective of the programme, he said, is to ensure the understanding and appropriate interpretation of the Constitution.

"We don't want people to interpret it wrongly."

Another objective of introducing the Constitution literacy programme is to understand that there may be laws or enactments that contradict the Constitution.

"So we need to reconcile by amending these certain acts or state enactments that contradict the Federal Constitution," he added.

The last objective is make sure that there was no "rewriting" of the Constitution through other channels, Saifuddin said.

He also revealed that the NUCC will also propose to appoint renowned constitutional expert Professor Shad Saleem Faruqi to head this programme.

"There are already people on the ground working on creating awareness on the Constitution as well, like MyConsti, whom we are proposing to work with.

"This programme doesn't have to be a formal subject in schools that you need to sit a test for," he added.

Besides the Constitution literacy programme, the committee is also putting together the feedback it has received over several months now on the proposed Harmony Bills, which is due to replace the draconian Sedition Act.

The council has received a barrage of criticism over the three bills it has proposed, namely the Racial and Religious Hate Crimes Bill, the National Harmony and Reconciliation Bill and the National Harmony and Reconciliation Commission Bill.

Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had raised concerns that the proposed laws would cause inequality among Malaysia’s three major ethnic communities as it would erase all remaining efforts to balance the economic standing between the communities through the New Economic Policy (NEP) because they would end discrimination based on ethnicity and introduce the principle of meritocracy in giving out government contracts, jobs and university scholarships.

Saifuddin had earlier told The Malaysian Insider that the NUCC has successfully established a new and better was of law-making through consultation with the people.

"This is opposed to the usual way of doing it, where most of the times, the MPs only get to see the bills when they are about to be tabled in the Dewan Rakyat," he added.

He said that the input received from the several consultations done with the public, including lawmakers, civil society and students, would also be sent to the Attorney-General's Chambers, who will draft the bills.

The 30-member NUCC is expected to hand on the report to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in September. –TMI