BUMBURING : 'LAIN-LAIN' Category on Official Form

I remember having brought up the issues of "Others" in the racial category in government official forms in parliament at least three times when Inwas the Tuaran MP and the decision bybthe Sarawak which was emulated by the Sabah Government is timely albeit a bit late. 

All along, putting the Natives of Sabah and Sarawak as well as some other communal group in Semenanjung under the ‘Lain-lain’ race category was against the spirit of the Malaysia Agreement 1963. 

The KDM community was clearly defined and stated categorically by our first Prime Minister when he announced the formation of Malaysia comprising Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore as a distinct racial group on the same level with the Malays in Semenanjung. 

Along this lines, the abolishment of the "Lain-lain" categories in official forms should not be confined to printed documents only but all online forms should be designed to accomodate this changes. 

The private sectors, such as banks, insurance companies and statutory bodies should also emulate this decision by abolishing the ‘Lain-Lain’ or ‘Others’ category in any of their forms and replace with a blank space where the race of an individual can be written or entered in the case of online forms. 

Also, this decision to do away with the ‘Lain-lain’ category should also include the whole country so that other minority racial group in the peninsular can be indentified by their race. For Sabah, I strongly feel that ‘Sabah Native’ or ‘Orang Asli Sabah’ be used instead of ‘Bumiputera.’

ON LOCAL ELECTION FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY

APS believe that election of official in Local Government, such as District, Manucipality and City Councillors would enhanced the democratic proses in Malaysia. 

It would also enhanced the sense of responsibility of the would-be elected councillors. Under the present system, the appointment of councillors are dominated by one or two political parties that are in power. 

I disagree with the notion that election of councillors will be dominated by one race. Although this may be true in some cases where the ethnic density is dominated by a particular race, however, overall these is not be true as the majority of the population who are the electors or voters in any particular geographical jurisdiction of a local government are multi-ethnic and multiracial and most of them may be residing in areas outside of the urban or suburban areas. 

YB DATUK SERI PANGLIMA WILFRED M BUMBURING

(PRESIDENT, ANGKATAN PERUMAHAN SABAH (APS)

State Assemblyman, N.9 Tamparuli.)