KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 — DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang today issued two challenges to Malaysian youths, after expressing delight over the quality of debaters who participated in the Parliamentary Debathon 2019 Youth, which concluded yesterday.
The Iskandar Puteri MP challenged youths aged between 16 and 25-years -old to spearhead a national campaign aimed at cleaning up the Malaysian social media scene of fake news, and secondly to prove to the world that Malaysia is a successful example of “an alliance of civilisations and not an example of failure from clash of civilisations.”
He referred to the multi-racial communities here and their histories, as making up the civilisations.
Lim said that Pakatan Harapan (PH) has already set in place, an avenue for youths to have a say in the nation's development, by lowering the voting age to 18, and they should, therefore, use the opportunity to improve the country's standing, especially in combating fake news and hate speech.
“If fake news and hate speech calculated to incite inter-racial and inter-religious misunderstandings and undermine inter-racial and inter-religious tolerance and harmony are not checked, the only outcome is a racial and religious conflagration in multi-racial conflagration with all Malaysian as the losers,” Lim said.
He pointed out that Malaysia is in need of a “win-win formula” for harmony.
“This is not the future that Malaysians want, as we want a win-win formula through an alliance of civilisations, as Malaysia is a confluence of four great civilisations of the world ― Malay, Chinese, Indian and Western ― and Malaysians should leverage on the best values and virtues of these four civilisations instead of being a failed, rogue and kleptocratic state because of a clash of civilisations in the country,” he added.
Malaysiakini reported that in the first series of the Parliamentary Debathon 2019 Youth, 16 and 25 year-old debaters argued on a topic called “Precariat workers in the gig economy”, about how best to protect the growing number of freelance and contract-based workers.
The programme was organised by Malaysiakini's events arm, KiniEvents, and held in conjunction with its 20th anniversary and the Parliament’s 60th anniversary.
Other organising partners include the Education Ministry, Human Resources Ministry, Human Resources Development Fund, Skills Development Fund Corporation and the Malaysia Reform Initiative.
