COMMENT It was reported that Perkasa secretary-general Syed Hassan Syed Ali had said he and thousands of others will quit Umno if the three draft national unity bills published by the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) are accepted by the government.

Under the current scenario, I doubt Perkasa actually has any choice other than Umno.

I cannot see the possibility of Perkasa switching allegiance to MIC. But, I would not dismiss this threat completely because it will certainly put the government under pressure when dealing with recommendations from the NUCC.

This whole mess could have been avoided if the NUCC's Working Committee on Law and Policy did not hastily, and without a clear strategy or aim, publish the three draft bills while everybody else in the NUCC had been busy collecting and analysing data.

The methodology deployed by the working committee is wrong. And their actions put the wider work of the NUCC at risk because the committee members have published the draft bills without providing any context or background information.

The NUCC Working Committee on Law and Policy is now inviting members of the public to comment on their three draft bills. This is an irrelevant request.

If I were to put up a shiny antique mahogany desk to members of the public, and ask them to tell me what they think, it is almost certain that everyone would say the desk is a beauty.

But if, several months down the line, I inform the people that the desk was bought for use by four-year-old children in a village kindergarten, only then would we realise what a silly purchase that was.

The context is missing when the consultation was first initiated, therefore, completely misleading the public.

Talking in the dark

Without a clear context, public consultation is a futile exercise. In reality, everybody, including the members of the working committee themselves, are talking and commenting in the dark because the full big picture is not yet presented.

We do not know how the findings of the other working committees feed into one another, and we are not even told what data have been found by the NUCC secretariat led by prominent and respected researchers from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Institute of Ethnic Studies (Kita-UKM).

In such darkness, how can anybody make any comment at all? And, in such darkness, it is no surprise that the rejection against the NUCC is getting stronger.

By bulldozing through their draft bills without a proper plan or strategy, the Law and Policy Working Committee has effectively given detractors their much needed ammunition to kill off the NUCC as a whole.

The NUCC's own member, Marina Mahathir ( right ), once said the NUCC's biggest challenge is the deficit in trust among members of the public on anything the government does.

Marina hit the nail on the head with this statement, but unfortunately some members of the NUCC ignored her warning. Now, due to the mistake of this one committee, the trust deficit has widened.

Let me make it clear: I want to see the NUCC succeed. All the transformation taking place in the country today would be worthless if we end up becoming a divided nation.

At the rate we are going today, it seems like some quarters are bent on dividing us, and they would probably be happy if we end up with ethnic and religious strife.

A holistic document crucial

For the sake of our country's future well-being, the success of the NUCC is absolutely imperative. But to ensure NUCC's success, it has to work more strategically and its committees not sabotage one another, whether intentionally or not. For that reason, the draft bills must be rescinded immediately.

At an event with the NUCC in early June this year, I was the first person to propose that the NUCC should publish a White Paper explaining its full intentions and vision. I want to reiterate that suggestion here because my intention has always been to see a successful and well-accepted NUCC.

Even if the NUCC does not want to draft a White Paper because of bureaucracy, it must, first of all, publish a holistic document to explain the big picture, and then only gradually move to the technicalities.

We have done this before and the proper sequencing should be obvious.

Malaysia has seen the publication of the New Economic Model (NEM), followed by the launch of the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), and then only followed by the various initiatives and legal reforms. You go from a 30,000 feet macro-view to a three-feet implementation mode. Not the other way around.

So, before it is too late, the NUCC must rescind the draft bills and focus on drafting the big picture instead. And, the NUCC must do this immediately.

WAN SAIFUL WAN JAN is the chief executive of the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas).