Scrap BTN under Budget 2016 review, says Kit Siang

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak should dissolve the National Civics Bureau, or Biro Tata Negara (BTN), under the Budget 2016 review as its programmes have an 'anti-national' agenda, the DAP said today. The party's parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang said closing the agency would be the first step in the effort to promote national unity, as BTN programmes had only fostered racism, disunity and extremism in the past three decades. He said that even the grouping of top former Malay civil servants, G25, had condemned BTN for being "ultra Malay-racist". Lim, the Gelang Patah MP, said that for the past 30 years, Parliament had allocated some RM1.2 billion for the bureau's operations, adding that from 2010 to 2016, the budget for BTN totalled over RM400 million. He added that BTN also failed to use the Rukunegara as a basic text in its national civics course, resulting in more and more Malaysians being ignorant about the state ideology as a guiding principle. "RM1.2 billion would have been better spent helping the poor and needy instead of maintaining an anti-national agency under the cover of promoting patriotism in the very bosom of the government civil service. "The BTN has also failed to leverage on the unique position of Malaysia as a confluence of the great religions and civilisations of the world, to spread and disseminate the best values from them," he said. – January 24, 2016.