The Foreign Minister of Malaysia, Rais Yatim said this:
“What I would like to stress is the need to include the eastern values in the clause. For example, respecting an elder and religious values are important to us in Asia. We can’t take the Universal Human Rights Declaration as a whole and apply it here,” he told a news conference at Wisma Putra here. [Asean Unlikely To Reach Agreement On Human Rights Issue. Bernama. July 18 2008]
What? Would the Charter compel its citizens to respect the elders? If a person failed to do so, would the person be dragged to a constitutional court?
Could we have a more flimsy constitution please?
How the hell could we ratify the Charter without finalizing its content?
This and the fact that a majority of countries, Malaysia included, have the document bypassed the people, us, the citizens of ASEAN, in favor of the bureaucrats is slowly sowing my opposition to the Charter.
This is quite sad because I am supportive of the Charter in principle from the very start. If the Charter turns out to be as bad as I am imagining it would be, then I truly hope that Indonesia and the Phillipines would give it two thumbs down after deliberating the document in their respective legislative chambers.
3 replies on “[1728] Of me becoming an anti-Charter Aseanist”
Yang muda mabuk, yang tua Korupt.. Budaya Asia.
ROFL.
What Asian value?
In the history, Kongfuzi once knock an old man ,”when young, you did nothing good to your family. When you growth older, you did nothing valuable to the society. Now you become old and still alive, you are thief to the society”
Perhaps PolPot can teach Rais Yatim some lesson.
Perhaps they are attempting to avoid the fiasco of the European Constitution-then-“Treaty” decapitated by the Irish.
If the Charter remains in abeyance long enough for member nations to make some progress domestically there may be some hope.