Last Friday, Red Dot United (RDU) organised a Ramadhan Iftar with Friends event just to mingle and build friendships, without any other agenda. We are thankful that leaders and members of almost all alternative parties came together to break fast at the event.
Welcoming our friends to the event, Dr David Foo, Chairman of RDU said, “If you look around, this can be the single largest gathering of all the different parties in Singapore (since the last General Election).”
Ravi Philemon, Secretary-General of RDU, said: “We must find more opportunities where we can come together and support one another in an informal surrounding so that we can build friendships and trust one another.”
He emphasised that the common goal of all the people who attended the Iftar is the same, which is to see Singapore and Singaporeans do better going forward.
RDU also unveiled its Malay Bureau at the event. The Head of RDU’s Malay Bureau, Mohamed Feroz, said, “RDU’s Malay Bureau will be one more channel to be the voice of some unique concerns of the Malay/Muslim community.”
The following is his speech in full:
Dear friends, thank you for joining us this evening. We planned for this event just to mingle and build friendships, without any other agenda. But since I am the head of RDU’s newly set-up Malay Bureau, I thought it will be a good occasion to launch the Bureau. I pitched it to the party leadership and got their blessings to do so.
RDU’s Malay Bureau will be one more channel to be the voice of some unique concerns of the Malay/Muslim community. It is good to have multiple platforms to highlight the concerns of our people as one official channel alone cannot reasonably manage the various issues in the Malay-Muslim community.
RDU’s Malay Bureau will not be like some government-sanctioned bodies which sometimes insists that their views are the only valid views. They also very rarely welcome suggestions or criticisms. From personal experience, I know that if you bring up suggestions, you can be talked-down to, ridiculed - and if all else fails, they will give you the ‘silent’ treatment.
We want to be different. We are open to collaborating with all political parties, civil society groups, and religious scholars to talk about, address and find reasonable solutions to some of the unique problems faced by our Malay-Muslim community. And from the Hijab issue, to the Ethnic Integration Policy, to the lack of Malays in key positions in our Armed Forces, there are many issues which affect us.
Towards this, we will be holding a "Sembang Siasah" (Chat on Politics) session periodically and we will invite you to be a part of it. Please do give us your support when you receive the invitation.
Our Malay-Muslim people are precious, not just as a voter-base, but also because they contributed to the nation building and sacrificed a lot for Singapore. They need proper representation. And that is what RDU’s Malay Bureau hopes to provide.
I hope that with all of your participation and with the support of our own Malay-Muslim community, we can build up a credible alternative channel for our people to speak up.
Once again, thank you everyone!
21 окт 2024
