An assault on the Constitution

HERE’S a hypothetical guide to getting atrocious legislation through Parliament.

First, while in the Opposition, make lofty promises about protecting and expanding the rights of children, including the ability of mothers to confer their citizenship to their children born overseas (already enjoyed by fathers).

Along with your colleagues (including your candidate for prime minister), uphold the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and declare your commitment to leading on the issue.

Second, after a successful general election and forming the government, triumphantly announce that you’re going to actually pursue one of these reforms:

Mothers will finally be equal to fathers in being able to transmit their citizenship to their children! Civil society organisations (CSOs) pour their congratulations, and you get feted and praised for addressing a historical injustice.

Third, reveal your actual agenda, which is to add a bunch of other things to the good thing you previously announced. Yes, you say, you’ll give mothers that equality. But you need to take something else away.

At the same time, as you grant something to benefit one group of children, you make things more difficult for other groups of children.

In particular, you abolish a constitutional right afforded to foundlings, or infants who have been abandoned by their parents. Up till now, they are automatically given citizenship by operation of law.

But you want to change this to give your ministry the power to decide whether to grant citizenship.

Of course, there will be an outcry from civil society.

But it’s okay, because (fourthly) you will have already conducted a campaign of scaremongering briefings, citing national security concerns, for other institutions (that haven’t heard the opposing arguments) to defend you.

Indeed, you can say that because an irreproachable institution has already agreed with your proposal, it cannot be changed, for that would be violating the royal command.

Of course, in reality, you were the actual architect of the whole scheme!

The above is, as I say, a hypothesis, but it’s one that looks increasingly real to civil society organisations that have been fighting the government’s insistence to combine constitutional amendments for deliberation by MPs. The CSOs are asking for the government to at least decouple the amendments.

This would be the fairer, more democratic thing to do.

But the minister will not budge, putting both CSOs and MPs in a deliberately difficult moral dilemma.

Even so, those who had long campaigned for equality for mothers have already said that they are willing to delay their demand if it is at the cost of depriving children of their rights.

They, like so many lawyers and activists, recognise that the latter amendments are reprehensible, being a direct assault on our Federal Constitution and an affront to our country’s founding values.

Indeed, there has been no other country in a decade that has passed a law to make citizenship for children more difficult.

The removal of a constitutional right is a huge matter.

I can scarcely imagine the government contemplating removing constitutional rights from other groups.

But marginalised children – unlike those groups – lack political platforms to defend themselves. That’s why civil society is flabbergasted by these proposed amendments.

When stateless persons lack a clear pathway to citizenship, they face a future without public education, banking, healthcare services and employment.

This, in turn, increases their risk of exploitation and trafficking.

And it is this, which is the real issue threatening our national security, not scaremongering about children being terrorists.Beyond the humanitarian angle, the economic cost of statelessness must also be considered.

A 2019 study from the office of the MP for Subang showed an estimated annual loss of RM6bil due to the denial of citizenship to around 300,000 individuals born in Malaysia or to Malaysian parents.

The report underscores the urgent need for decisive action to resolve citizenship issues.

Doing so could yield significant economic, social and health benefits without incurring additional administrative cost.

There are several other things about this whole debacle that I have been told but probably can never verify.

At this stage, CSOs don’t care what the excuse is, if it means halting the permanent abolition of a constitutional right to the most vulnerable in our society.

Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin is founding president of Ideas and trustee of Yayasan Chow Kit.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.