Author: Hafiz Noor Shams

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.