“... WILL THEY PLEDGE TO THE RAKYAT THAT IF WE PUT THEM IN PUTRAJAYA THEY WILL IMPLEMENT THESE REFORMS. ... “ - HARIS

Movement to take reform agenda to people

TAWAU September 30, 2011: After three years of seeing no reforms from the government, the Malaysia Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM) is taking its reform agenda to the people for approval and be offered to non Barisan Nasional parties.

MCLM president Haris Ibrahim said the movement was going on a roadshow to hold a forum with the people on the Rakyat Reform Agenda (RARA) which is to:

• Honour the agreements made in 1963 between the Federation of Malaya and Sabah and Sarawak prior to the formation of the Federation of Malaysia.
• Restore the national institutions to the rakyat – the judiciary, the Election Commission, the police force, the Attorney General Chambers, and others.
• Restore the liberties guaranteed to the rakyat under the Federal Constitution by repealing the ISA, OSA, PPPA, UUCA and Sedition Act.
• Adopt the Social Inclusion Agenda designed to raise the living standards of all marginalised persons in Malaysia.

“In this forum we will ask the rakyat that if they think that this is a good programme, give us the mandate to write to the non Barisan Nasional (BN) parties. We will give them (the latter) the four pillars of reformation and tell them the people who attended the forum had given us the mandate, and will they pledge to the rakyat that if we put them in Putrajaya they will implement these reforms. If they say yes, we will start work with them, we will start to go to the ground. If they say no, I will ask the people to ask them, what’s wrong, why will they not pledge to implement,” he said yesterday.

Haris said MCLM would not write to BN parties because for the last three years, the people had not seen any reforms.

He said Sabah’s 20-Point and Sarawak’s 18-Point agreements as equal partners of the Malaysian Federation would be examined by a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

Explaining on the MCLM, he said it came about after MCLM chairman Raja Petra Kamaruddin and himself (Haris) were very concerned about the extent of the number of ‘anak bangsa Malaysia’ who were marginalised and left out from the mainstream of economic development, educational opportunities and added that 40 per cent of these could be found in Sabah, Sarawak and Malaya.

In the last three years after the last general election, he said the people had not seen any reforms, and with that in mind they began to draft a doable reform agenda that the new government in a five-year term would carry out.

He said the Social Inclusion Agenda (SIA) was designed to improve race relations, sharing of wealth and equality, as poverty is very real in the country.