KUALA LUMPUR, March 13 — The Malaysian government must present a either Green Paper or White Paper for its planned amendments to citizenship laws in the Federal Constitution, and MPs should not support the “rushed” legal changes that could deny citizenship to stateless natives and further harm abandoned babies, advocacy group Projek SAMA said today.
Project – Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek SAMA), a civil society initiative advocating for institutional reforms, said the government should first seek consultation via a Green Paper or provide a White Paper if it insists on tabling the amendments in Parliament.
“Projek SAMA calls for the Madani government to produce and lay before Parliament a Green Paper and allow more deliberation on the proposed amendments to Federal Constitution with regard to citizenship.
“However, if the government insists on a sets of amendments, then it should be accompanied by a White Paper that explains the government’s justification for such contentious amendments, and furnishes facts, data and cases that guided its decision,” it said in a statement today.
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Malaysia’s Parliament is based on UK’s Westminster system, and the UK Parliament’s online glossary defines Green Papers as government-produced consultation documents to allow both those inside and outside Parliament to provide feedback on policy or legislative proposals. In other words, the public would be able to study the Green Papers and give suggestions before new laws or changes to laws are made.
The same online glossary defines White Papers as government-produced policy documents which set out the government’s proposals for future laws and may include a draft of the planned Bill, which would enable consultation and discussion with interested or affected groups and allows final changes before a Bill is tabled to Parliament.
In the same statement, Projek SAMA also directly called on MPs — especially government backbenchers and opposition MPs — to protect the Federal Constitution from rushed amendments.
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Projek SAMA said “no one should be blind supporters of such amendments”, adding that Parliament should also not be a “mere rubber stamp” and there should instead be transparency and meaningful deliberation in the lawmaking process as the new practice under the current government premised on institutional reform.
Projek SAMA acknowledged that the planned amendments include a progressive part to grant citizenship for Malaysian mother’s overseas-born children, but said others are regressive, with far-reaching consequences to children who are born in Malaysia but are stateless.
Amid civil society and government backbenchers’ concerns and with the home minister citing control and security concerns as justification for the amendments, Projek SAMA said the government has been partially releasing facts and data in stages to defend its position without giving a full picture that would justify the urgency for going ahead with the citizenship amendments.
Projek SAMA said some of the data presented by the home minister have also been “heavily criticised”, as they are starkly different from the experience of and data collected by civil society and stateless persons in Malaysia.
“It is disturbing that constitutional amendments affecting the lives and rights of many are handled in such a manner shrouded in secrecy,” it said.
It said that the home minister’s assurances are insufficient to get society support for the law changes, and that non-government stakeholders should instead be given enough space to assess the proposed amendments’ merit, feasibility, impact, and its improvement and alternative policy to address the interests of both government and stakeholders.
While saying that the Sabah government and the state’s MPs are concerned about the security implications of certain existing citizenship laws and that “some quarters” appear to want to present the restrictive citizenship amendments as a purported quick fix for the state’s Project IC problem, Projek SAMA said the government should present facts and figures to convince the public if these amendments can indeed mitigate Project IC’s consequences. “A rushed Bill may be more damaging than just being a placebo, with unintended consequences including denying citizenship to some stateless natives in Sabah and Sarawak, and causing grave cruelty to abandoned babies nationwide, in direct contradiction to the value of ‘compassion’ (Ehsan) in Madani,” it said.
“If the government is confident with its solution it should not fear presenting a Green or White Paper before tabling the Bill,” it said.
It pointed out that the government’s credibility risks being harmed if the Bill on the citizenship amendments has to be withdrawn after tabling in Parliament due to backlash, also adding: “If any MPs can’t bring himself/herself to oppose it, then they must not be part of the yes vote. This is a justified occasion for backbench disobedience.”
It said the government should aim to get cross-party consensus or the agreement of MPs from different political parties through a parliamentary select committee to support the amendments, just as what was done previously in law amendments to reduce the voting age to 18 years old and to discourage elected lawmakers from hopping to other political parties.
“It is high time that that we modernize the legislative process to allow more transparent, substantive deliberation and public participation on law-making process. The mindsets of ‘government knows it all’ must change,” it said.
