Malaysians and Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ should not be distracted by extremism and racism from focusing on the real people-centric issues of democracy, integrity and good governance that can ensure economic prosperity and social justice. Malaysians have fought to ensure that our country is not only tolerant but more importantly respects and celebrates diversity.
For this reason, our fundamental and basic human rights of freedom of religion shall never be compromised. DAP believes that Muslims and non-Muslims will never allow such fundamental rights that is enshrined in our Federal Constitution to be violated by racists and extremists, until Christmas is banned or uncivilised and barbaric people disrupts Christmas by threatening churches as is happening in some countries.
Malaysians have been severely affected by a self-inflicted economic crisis caused by financial scandals such as the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal and RM2.6 billion donation scandal, failed economic policies that resulted in high government debt,deficit and depreciation of the ringgit, as well as an economic downturn caused by the 6% GST.
There is a viable alternative and a ready solution to such an economic crisis as shown by the performance of the Penang Pakatan Harapan state government that can record low debts and annual budget surpluses as well as reduce income inequality without implementing any GST because of good governance and clean leadership. Malaysians need to overcome the policies of racism and extremism of the BN that serves to divide the people and also avoid answering the financial scandals.
The latest challenge is the implementation of the National Security Council Act that serves to concentrate the powers on one person and clearly violated the spirit of the federal constitution and the sanctity of the rule of law. As Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, President of the National Human Rights Society of Malaysia said,
“this law gives absolute power to the prime minister to declare an area a ‘security area’, whereby the security forces can do anything, including arrest, seizure of property and even killing, relocating whole areas without any of the usual legal safeguards”
Malaysians need to unite to prevent our democracy from turning into an autocracy, our freedoms being curtailed by a dictatorship and whistleblowers being punished whilst corruption go unpunished.