Photo Credit: Yahoo SG
WP MP Faisal Manap raises some concerns of Muslims, as expressed in the Suara Musyawarah Report, in Parliament.
Instead of addressing the issue head-on, PAP Muslim MPs tries to corner Faisal into taking a stand on the issue (which he didn’t, and i think he should have). Later, the MPs were either silent on the issue or tried to skirt it, or even deny it.
Now i have a few questions for the Muslim MPs:
1) Is the Suara Musyawarah Report not commissioned by the government? If so, what is the follow-up?
2) What is the attitude of the Muslim MPs towards the report? Take what you like from it, and ignore what you don’t?
3) If the latter is the case, why have the report in the first place?
4) Even IF those things stated are not true, those are indeed the perceptions of many Muslims. Will you address those perceptions with facts and figures, and reasoned argumentation? Or will those just be dismissed or ignored?
I call upon them to take a stand on these issues/questions, in the name of constructive politics.
Authored by Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, a public-spirited individual, is an ongoing Political Science student of the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a three-times award recipient of the Graduate Student Teaching (GSTA) Award Honour Roll in 2012. In the recent NUS Commencement Week, he was also selected as the Valedictorian of his cohort.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Seems like both parties cranked up their engines harder this time round with fancy new measures and proposals. The announcement on setting up of WP Malay/Muslim committee to oversee concerns faced by the community should have been done way much earlier. Nevertheless, it’s better late than never. We applaud WP to help the community alongside PAP. Having two different approaches and perspectives to issues will definitely result in expedited progress, only if sole focus is on the community, and not about the respective parties and what’s important to them.
We are glad that more and more Muslims are speaking up for what’s good for their community. This is our country and in a significant way, we have the right to decide our future. As long that discussions are not baseless and no vulgarities involved, someday somehow someone will hear us.
