PETALING JAYA: If Barisan Nasional wins GE15, it pledges to amend the Federal Constitution to include automatic citizenship for children born to Malaysian women abroad.
This pledge is part of Barisan’s election manifesto dubbed “Padu” (Perancangan Amal dan Usaha) as part of its pledge to uphold needs-based policies in its 10 core clusters.
Aside from that, Barisan pledges to establish an anti-sexual harassment tribunal and to conduct a needs assessment to establish a gender equality tribunal.
It also plans to strengthen the Islamic legal system and the syariah courts by enhancing the position and independence of the syariah judiciary to be on par with that of the civil courts.
Barisan also pledges to expand the existing legal aid scheme for syariah cases that helps the deserving and needy.
On Aug 29, former de facto law minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said pointed out that 1.86 million Malaysian women are living overseas, citing citizenship issues as one of the main factors stopping them from coming back to Malaysia.
This figure represents 12% of the total female population of 15.6 million in Malaysia.
Wanita MCA chief Datuk Heng Seai Kie said she was glad that Barisan included a pledge to amend the Federal Constitution to include automatic citizenship for children born to Malaysian women abroad.
Heng said Wanita MCA had tabled this issue during the Wanita Barisan convention in August and it was announced by coalition chairman Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi that it will be included in the GE15 manifesto.
“I’m confident that with the sincerity of Barisan the promise will be executed. As such, I would like to urge all Malaysians, especially female voters, to support our Barisan candidates,” said Heng.
NGO Family Frontiers exco Chee Yoke Ling welcomed Barisan’s efforts to include this issue in its election manifesto.
“We hope that this will not end up as previous general election manifestos where actions did not match pledges,” said Chee.
Chee also said the government, since 2020, had tried to block Malaysian women from seeking equal citizenship rights for their children.
“The same government failed to meet the timeline of their promised Constitutional amendment process.
“It remains to be seen if this election pledge will be honoured if Barisan becomes the government,” added Chee.
In September last year, the High Court ruled that Malaysian women have the same right as Malaysian men to confer automatic citizenship on their overseas-born children.
However, the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal on Aug 5 this year.
In a majority ruling, the court held that the Constitutional provision refers to the biological father and could not be extended to include the mother or parents, and that is up to Parliament, not the courts, to rewrite the Constitution.
