Flawed citizenship bill may be due to compromises with civil service - Ong

A former deputy minister has speculated that the controversial elements previously in the government's planned citizenship amendments may have been there partly due to compromises the administration had to reach with the civil service.

Ong Kian Ming, who was a deputy international trade and industry minister, postulated that in exchange for granting mothers the right to pass down citizenship to overseas-born children, the civil service may have asked for automatic citizenship for stateless children to be removed.

"The reason is that all these applications put a lot of burden on the Home Ministry, in terms of processing these applications.

"There's a lot of political pressure coming in from politicians as well, saying 'this case is legitimate, you (ministry) should look into it, approve it, I'll get the home minister to support’ and so on," he said on an episode of his “Are We OK” podcast.

Ong added that to Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail's credit, the latter had been making an effort to approve many citizenship applications among stateless people.

"But what I think the Home Ministry wants to do is to put a stop to that.

"Meaning 'there's no automatic citizenship (for the stateless) that would decrease the burden on us (civil servants) because a lot of things we can just reject outright', and that is the compromise being made here," he said.

Ong's remarks were from a segment recorded in late March but were only aired in the Tuesday episode.

Pressure and backlash

Ong said the delay was due to the issue’s sensitivity which was still up for debate in Parliament at the time.

Previously, the citizenship amendments included two provisions which would have denied automatic citizenship to foundlings, as well as to anyone born in Malaysia but is not a citizen of any country.

The latter provision is one that critics said would have affected many native communities who are still stateless.

These provisions were, however, dropped after continued pressure and backlash.

Ong also noted that activists are still criticising three other amendments planned.

The citizenship amendments bill was supposed to have been debated and voted on in Parliament last month.

However, the bill only progressed to the stage of Saifuddin presenting the merits of the bill as part of the second reading.

Right after, the Dewan Rakyat session ended, meaning the bill would only be debated and voted on when the lower house reconvenes in late June.

Speculation was rife that when the bill was tabled, the government did not have the support of all its MPs to secure the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Federal Constitution. - Mkini