– Lim Teck Ghee
The Malaysian Insider
January 11, 2014
When news of the establishment of the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) came out, many sceptics felt that this latest government effort to bring in a larger group of stakeholders – ostensibly to help resolve the rapidly growing divisions in society – was simply a hollow exploitation of public opinion. In fact I had written to a colleague who was named as one of its members to say “congrats, or is it condolences, if the NUCC proves as most expect it to be, another political wayang”.
Whether the area of concern has been in economics, the police, interfaith relations or education, all previous consultative councils, panels and task forces have failed to produce decisive action and genuine reforms to arrest the deterioration in governance – the main cause of the fault lines in the country’s social cohesion.
The recent statement by the chairman of the NUCC, Tan Sri Samsudin Osman on the latest religious controversy, however, does offer a glimmer of hope that the NUCC may be the exception among the various bodies appointed during the last decade – all of whom have been failures in pushing back regressive policies which are plunging the country into insolvency, political turmoil and social strife. Continue reading “Can the national unity council be sustained?”