Three things I like about the Peaceful Assembly Bill

MUCH has been said about how undemocratic the Peaceful Assembly Bill is. I beg to differ. On the contrary, three very good aspects of the Peaceful Assembly Bill have been missed by commentators. Here they are:

More religious

The Bill promotes a religious society. We all know how important religion is to ensure that we do not get discouraged by the high rate of inflation, caused entirely by the decadent West due to their blind adherence to the present Jewish financial system. By stipulating that assemblies cannot be held in a close proximity to religious places of worship, we can be sure that more effort will be put in by the government to build more places of worship, so that the space for assemblies can be restricted.

Furthermore, non-Muslims who have been facing difficulty getting approval to build places of worship can heave a collective sigh of relief because they now have one more reason to support their application. By approving more places of worship, the government will be able to restrict more places for assemblies. At long last, the objectives of the government and of the non-Muslim communities would be better aligned.

The authorities will listen to us

The Bill encourages true, participatory democracy. It used to be that our voices are only heard during election time. Once our representatives are elected, then we pretty much have no avenue to voice our grievances until and unless another election comes around.

With this Bill, we all have a positive role to play to object to assemblies that are planned near our place of business or abode. And the likelihood is that the authorities would be responsive to our objections. Can you believe how empowered we would all become? No longer will we be ignored by the authorities. Perhaps our views will even be positively solicited by them. An empowered citizenry is definitely the way to go.

No more gutter politics

The Bill will promote positive values and a positive society. We must all be sick to our stomachs with the kind of gutter politics that we see today. Enough of such nonsense, I say. Here is a Bill that specifically stipulates that in our assemblies, we are not to incite hatred, dissatisfaction or enmity in any way. No more negative politics. We now need to switch gears to only extol the virtues of our wonderful leaders.

Of course, this may pose a slight problem to the opposition, since they have no leader of virtue to speak about. But for the Barisan Nasional (BN), under whose glorious rule we continue to improve by leaps and bounds, to stand heads and shoulders above the rest of the nations of the world, this Bill is a godsend.

Of course, there are still the fence-sitters and naysayers who refuse to acknowledge this truth. These people need to wake up to the fact that we have even successfully defended our SEA Games football gold medal, and realise that we are definitely an up-and-coming nation.

So, kudos to the current government for leading the charge in formulating reforms for our country through the Peaceful Assembly Bill. It is undeniable that the foresight of the current cabinet is most exemplary and commendable. Why, even Barack Obama thinks so. And if Barack Obama has declared it, then who are the rest of us to argue otherwise?

Hidup BN, hidup Umno, hidup Malaysia!

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Chan Kheng Hoe aspires to be a PR practitioner. He has previously solicited job offers from North Korea.