Malay Rejection on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

Abstract

After the change of the new government on last year on 14th General Election in May 2018, Malaysia is facing with a new administration, ideas and form of government after sixty years in the hand of previous government called as the Barisan Nasional (BN). After given the mandate by the Malaysian, the new government under the role of Pakatan Harapan (PH) wanted to ratify the international convention known as International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) under the United Nation (UN) that promotes states to eliminate all form of discrimination in the government ruling. However, the ratification of ICERD has created major wrath of the Malays and Bumiputras due to inconsistency in certain aspects of special privilege and rights of the Malays and Bumiputras embedded in Article 153 of the Constitutions. ICERD imply negatively to the 'Social Contract', Islam as the national religion of the state and the constitutional monarchy system in Malaysia. This can be sum up as the effort of the Malay to protect its 'Ketuanan Melayu' as their identity. This paper is meant to study the pros and cons of the ICERD towards the people and also to analyze the reactions of the Malays especially towards the ICERD issues.

Constructivism Explained Malaysia’s Ratification Withdrawal of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 2018

“…This event was referred to as the 'Himpunan Aman Bantah ICERD' or 'white demonstration', a largescale demonstration by the Muslim-Malay alliance held in the capital to raise objections to the proposed ratification of ICERD (Ladiqi & Anis, 2019). This demonstration is the first time in Malaysian history, where there are more than a million Muslim-Malay and Bumiputera gathered on the streets.…”