By The Rocket
Can an agency, supposedly to chart the course of human development in Malaysia, yet resolutely ignores the changing times, ever be effective? Or will it be nothing more than a vilified ‘brain-washing’ agency?
Can national unity happen with agencies like BTN? The answer is no.
The national civics bureau (BTN) should have been an agency that charts the course of human and social development for the younger generation in Malaysia. Its role, according to their official website, is to deliver programmes that instilled patriotism through lessons, education, awareness campaigns and strategic sharing to public university students.
But for years their programmes has been vilified, due to testimonies from former public university students who complained of having to sit through lectures only to learn that the only way to be a true countryman is to acknowledge racial supremacy, fear and distrust among different ethnicities and religion.
In an era where cultural movements do not have to abide by mainstream ideas, what the BTN has been doing is to continue subverting attempts by well-intentioned Malaysians to move the discourse away from the racial politics, which is slowly becoming irrelevant, looking beyond skin colour and religious faith to embrace our national identity as well as our diversity.
Groups like the G25, consisting of former civil servants who are concerned with the direction the current government is heading, are those that urged for clear heads to prevail and not allow dogmatic ideas that the country can only be peaceful if one group is more superior to other groups, and that the spirit of the constitution should be uphold.
The G25 would speak up against nonsensical rulings and decry authorities who put their personal agenda in regulating behaviours, which can be proven divisive and turns ethnic groups against one another.
Therefore it is no surprise when they too would come under the BTN’s scrutiny and has been labeled as those educated under the “socialist system” in English medium schools during the 1970s, and that was far from the reality of such schools.
Other sets of slideshows have them claiming that “indie” book publishers like Fixi, Dubook, Merpati Jingga and others are the reason why anti-establishment sentiments have exists, and it also claimed that racism was a good word with negative connotations used by certain parties to achieve their goals, while clearly disregarding the actual terminology associated with the word.
BTN’s modus operandi was questioned by Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin in March, who called for the agency to revamp their training courses by treating undergraduates more like adults as the government cannot assume that blind support will get them far. Moreover, he was quoted as saying that the youths of today should be allowed to think and choose their support, and not develop blind devotion.
Yet BTN’s latest slideshows fracas has shown that the government agency is not catching up to the actual developments in the country.
Clearly learning none of these lessons, a slideshow of their internal discussion has since been leaked online, thus the BTN deservedly suffered a public backlash for labeling locally grown cultural movements like Frinjan and Buku Jalanan as deviant while also placing nonsensical accusations about Opposition party figures and their “tactics” to divert unity.
The agency’s director Datuk Raja Arif Raja Ali also reportedly said that there should be no hard feelings by the cultural movements as it was just an internal academic discussion module that wasn’t meant to be made to the public in the first place.
That is the worrying element about the BTN – if these were internal discussions leaked to the public, then what kind of positive messages were they hoping to input from such negative descriptions about other cultural movements or political parties?
In an era where majority Malaysians are shifting their mentality to become less race-based, having a government agency that still holds on to thinking that showing superiority from one race to another is a good move, should be considered a major concern.
DAPSY national executive member Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud said if the BTN be abolished it still keeps on to its current mission to bring disharmony to the Malaysian society.
“BTN explicitly do not respect democratic rights, nurturing racism and hatred, which will have consequences in the public sector and unity among Malaysians. Any political propaganda activities with such accusations should not be run by government agencies,” she said in a statement.
As such, what use is an agency that has fallen behind times? Where perhaps once it could get away with its racist undertones, it can no longer do so now.
– The Rocket
