In his blogpost “A national reconciliation update”, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced that the National Reconciliation Plan (NRP) “will be unveiled and implemented over the next few months” as a result of “months of quiet work”.
This is the second time that Najib has mentioned the National Reconciliation Plan.
The first time was after the Cabinet meeting of 29th January, when he announced that the Ministers had examined a National Reconciliation Plan “to develop and promote an environment which was conducive to and would help promote national reconciliation through unity and consensus in the country”.
He said the government’s National Reconciliation Plan would be based on four key thrusts, namely social, political, government and international relations and would be based on democratic principles.
Before January 29, nobody has ever heard of a National Reconciliation Plan.
Who drafted this National Reconciliation Plan and who had been consulted? This is still a great mystery up to now.
If the government has already a National Reconciliation Plan, which had been approved by the Cabinet and will be unveiled in the next few months with the Prime Minister leading its implementation, why and what is the use of the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) conducting a nation-wide roadshow to hold 18 dialogues to collect feedback from the public on national unity and inter-ethnic harmony to draft a National Unity Blueprint (NUB) – with the NUCC given two years to finalise the NUB though coming out with an interim report in six months’ time?
Will the NUCC dialogues in Kuala Lumpur, Seremban and Malacca last week and Johor, Kelantan and Terengganu this weekend and in Sabah and Pahang (March 8 and 9), Labuan, Kelantan and Terengganu (March 15), Perlis and Perak (March 16) Sibu and Miri (March 23 and 24) rounding up again in Kuala Lumpur on March 30 be totally redundant and be an utter waste of time and effort?
Have NUCC members been given copies of the NRP for guidance and reference for its nation-wide roadshow or is this still covered by the Official Secrets Act?
Najib should make public the proposed National Reconciliation Plan (NRP) for public feedback and input before finalization so that it could be a more comprehensive and inclusive roadmap to restore national unity and consensus in the country.
I also ask the Prime Minister to immediately ensure that all MPs, whether Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat, are immediately given copies of the National Reconciliation Plan approved by the Cabinet on January 29, so that MPs could fully debate the NRP when Parliament reconvenes in two weeks’ time.
Najib has never ceased to boast that he was the first to talk about “national reconciliation” immediately after the 13th General Elections, but Najib was also the first to misrepresent the outcome of the last general elections as a “Chinese tsunami” when it was in fact a Malaysian, particularly urban, tsunami.
I acknowledge that Najib was the first to mention “national reconciliation” after the 13GE, but he did absolutely nothing in the past ten months to give substance and effect to a process of national reconciliation, and what is worse, stood idly by while irresponsible and reckless elements embarked on their nefarious and treacherous designs to incite racial and religious animosities and hatred through lies and falsehoods to cause racial chaos and religious conflagration in the country.
As a result, Malaysia in the past 10 months had never been so polarized whether in terms of race or religion in the 56-year history of the nation.
I do not often agree with Tun Daim Zainuddin, but I agree when in his interview with KiniBiz, the former Finance Minister scoffed at claims that “Islam was under siege in Malaysia”, lamenting the lack of leadership by Najib and stressing that Malaysians want peace and stability.
I fully agree with Daim when he said: “If there are those who are out there to create problems, you must nip them in the bud. There are enough laws to handle this. But if you delay, procrastinate, then people will take advantage. That’s where the danger is.”
This is exactly Najib’s failure, as evident from the failures of the government and the police in the past 10 months to act against those responsible for incessantly inciting racial and religious animosities and hatred through lies and falsehoods, most notably the UMNO newspaper Utusan Malaysia.
Najib’s recipe to ignore the instigators and extremists who are incessantly preaching racial and religious animosities and hatred through lies and falsehoods flies in the face of the famous warning by Edmund Burke that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
All Malaysian good men and women, whether Malays, Chinese, Indians, Orang Asli, Kadazans, Ibans or Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs or Taoists, cannot do nothing for they must not allow evil to triumph in Malasia.
For this reason the “Walk in the Park” campaign by a group calling itself “Malaysians for Malaysia” launched by social activist Azrul Mohd Khalib to reject violence, aggression, bigotry and agreesion and to support tolerance, peace and harmony in our multi-racial and multi-religious society deserves the support from all Malaysian good men and women to prevent the triumph of evil in our beloved land.