vox populi small thumbnail 'The granting of the publishing licence should be a right if specified criteria are met. After all, there are laws that must be adhered to...'

Publishing permit a 'privilege', not a right

David Dass: I am not sure what this means - a newspaper licence is a privilege, not a right.

If it is a privilege, whose gift is it to give? What criteria will be applied before the privilege is bestowed? Will the privilege never be bestowed on an opposition newspaper? Must the government in power feel comfortable that the owners of the proposed newspaper are ‘safe'?

These are questions that arise from the statement that a newspaper licence is a privilege and not a right. It does not really bear any examination. The granting of the licence should be a right if specified criteria are met.

After all, there are laws that must be adhered to and the licence can be withdrawn.

Lim Chong Leong: No, Abu Seman Yusop, your position as deputy minister and your boss' position as home minister is a privilege and not a right. However, your boss, the minister, seems to think it is his birthright.

Freedom of speech must include the freedom to publish or it is not a freedom. There are laws to curb the abuse of this freedom like libel and slander and there is no place for the government to arbitrarily impose curbs on who has the right to publish or not.

We will inevitably have only apple polishing publications as we do now in the MSM (mainstream media) and even worse, like Utusan Malaysia which spews poison every other day for and on behalf of Umno.

Likewise, the public's freedom to information is a right that can only be complimented with the freedom of publication. Right now, every action involving billions of the rakyat's money is hushed up because that so-called ‘privilege' is not ‘granted' to those sworn to publish the truth.

Hmmmm: So the access to the truth is a privilege?

WhatLiesBeneath: Abu Seman, it's not up to you to tell us what our privileges are. We want press freedom and your job is to implement that. You really don't have to worry because we are perfectly aware of the dangers of unbriddled press freedom. Comprende?

Azizi Khan: The Home Ministry does not want "independent, balanced and credible". What they require is for Malaysiakini to stoop to gutter trash like Utusan and it will qualify for a publishing permit immediately.

If Utusan is what it takes to publish a newspaper in Malaysia, Malaysiakini is better off being an online news portal.

Joker: A privilege and not a right? You mean a privilege for the connected and subservient?

Utusan , which published rubbish and hatred-inciting articles, is able to renew its permits year in, year out while Malaysiakin i, which viewers have to pay money to access, are unable to print its own newspaper.

Tan Kim Keong: As with most of these bureaucrats, Abu Seman is also suffering from a serious case of intellectual jaundice.

Just like DPM Muyhiddin Yassin, who has a very predictable trademark of rubbishing findings of empirical studies without any argument (not even inane ones), Abu Seman has shown himself to be of the same 'calibre' by just saying 'it is a privilege, not a right' without anything to substantiate it.

As we citizens have known all along, it has always been the case of class struggle here. Such daft people are appointed to maintain the status quo of the elite and ruling class. It is not actually about race. Divide-and-rule policy of Umno is only a very clever strategy.

3com: This is like saying, "It is your privilege to have sex, and government won't issue you a marriage permit."

50 years later, green IC holder still in limbo

Kgen: A sweeper who is Muslim can get permanent resident (PR) and citizenship easily but a non-Muslim who has contributed to the economy, paid taxes and has an Employees Provident Fund (EPF) account is still a green card holder after 48 years. What kind of double standards is this?

To fast track himself to a citizen all that Chai King Nin has to do is: 1) Go to the Election Commission (EC) and make a pledge to vote for BN. 2) EC will put him on the rolls. 3) Tip off an opposition politician that a green card holder is registered as a voter. 4) The National Registration Department (NRD) will upgrade him to citizen in a matter of hours.

Jedi_Who: It is not only the race but the religion that Umno discriminates against. In Sabah, they handed instant citizenship to Filipino Muslims. Here, in West Malaysia they are handing it to Muslim Indonesians.

Hann Wei Toh: I guess we need to rethink. If a refugee slips into this country today, and lives for 50 years, should he or she then be granted citizenship status?

We can blame the government for allowing too many Indonesians to easily get Malaysia citizenship, but they are allegedly legal immigrants who follow proper application procedures.

What we need is to define a procedure for such cases.

Onyourtoes: Yet thousands of citizenships and PR status (with bumiputera status thrown in) were given to a special category of people who have just come in recently.

This is Umno-BN and that is why they can never get the respect from the people. They can repeal all the draconian laws tomorrow, but I can tell you it will not make an iota of difference.

They do not know what fairness, justice and compassion are all about. They only know parochialism, bigotry, supremacy, money and power.

Tkc: About three years ago, one of the first things that Hishammuddin Hussein did when he took over the Home Ministry portfolio was to have a photo opportunity with a Chinese uncle just like Chai and announced to the nation that he empathised with the predicament of people who have waited a long time for their application for PR or citizenship to be approved.

He pledged that his ministry would do its utmost to expedite all outstanding cases and clear as many backlogs as possible. The headline news that day must have brought tears of anticipation to a lot of people like Chai, including the long-suffering foreign spouses of citizens who were not given a chance.

In hindsight, the fact that Chai is still given the run-around at the NRD office shows that the press conference held by Hishammuddin had a hidden agenda - to divert attention and to justify giving out thousands to MyKads to people such as Mismah, who incidentally became voters as well.

Up2U: The NRD must be made to answer why so many non-Malays, including those born in Malaysia, have to wait so many years to obtain or rather not able to obtain their citizenship while so many 'foreigners' can so easily obtain their citizenship.

 

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