Media statement by Dr. Hiew King Cheu in Kota Kinabalu on Wednesday, 14^th September 2011:

Delete Race and Religion columns on government forms

The race and religion columns on all government forms are to be removed permanently due to the implication on the national integration, unity and harmony is being infringed and disturbed. This is especially so when the government is using this particular information to draw up unfair rules and created favoritism among the different races and religions in Malaysia. This had resulted in serious build up of tension and unfairness among the people, and there is already a wide spread of misunderstanding and voices of dismay.

It is totally unnecessary to fill the race and religion as a compulsory item in the government forms, because Malaysia by today should be a nation of Malaysian only. The "1-Malaysia" slogan pushed forward and publicized by the BN government, which had utilized millions ringgits of tax-payers' money had not been truly reflecting its real purpose, functions and objectives. That is why the BN government had failed thoroughly on what they wanted to achieve by selling the idea of 1-Malaysia.

The Penang state government has made a good move by removing and deleting in one of its official application form the column on race and religion. The action taken by the Penang Pakatan Rakyat under the leadership of the Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng is highly commendable and admirable by many Malaysian. This step has moved the national towards a very big step and advancement to achieve national unity, integration, and creating a harmonious Malaysian society in the future. How nice if we are all Malaysian brother and sister without differences and with the highest degree of respect for each other.

The BN government is actually utilizing a "split and divide" type of rules in Malaysia, and that is why Malaysians are divided until today. The 1-Malaysia thing is falling into pieces if we look at the wide cross section of the Malaysia society. Do we see brotherhood, unity, and harmony among the people? The people just refused to discuss this openly but inside them there is some thing else.

Sabah used to be a place where every Sabahan has no differences, very harmonious, friendly, no boundaries on religion and believes, united together and respected each other, but now we see there are changes in all these and the old ways do not exist anymore. What went wrong and what are the costs we Sabahan are paying on losing these? The cost of lost cannot be estimated and we suffer very much from these losses. Who to be blamed and who are responsible? The straight answer is, we Sabahans are to be blamed, because it is us who gave up and created all these happenings.

If the Sabah government follows the Penang Government to delete the race column and the religion column from the government forms, this will be a big step taken to regain what we had before.

I challenge the Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman to delete the race and religion colomns in all the government official form to show that he is serious in bringing to the Sabahan an improved harmonious society.

* Dr Hiew King Cheu, MP for Kota Kinabalu