FEBUARY 6 — Come 2026, long standing associations like Dong Zong and All Women’s Action Society (Awam) may cease to exist.
The home minister likely reads amendments to the Societies Act 1966 (Act 832) next year at Parliament.
If passed, the IF only an afterthought since the Unity Government has close to two-thirds of Dewan Rakyat, so better just replace with WHEN passed.
One potential change, organisations will require renewals every three years. Translated, renewal rejection means dissolution.
Alarmist much?
Maybe, but when engagement happens in the shadows with bureaucrats proudly backslapping each other for their forthrightness and virtue and invite people to mock sessions only to solicit a group photo, a move to break the glass in case of fire is not insane. Because smoke is present.
Better rewind this Snowpiercer before it goes over the edge prematurely.
To the start then.
A generic invitation
On January 14, 2025, the Registrar of Societies (ROS) sent an email invite to KL and Selangor organisations for an engagement session.
They informed, the Societies Act has been amended seven times since inception, the last being in 1998.
Six prime ministers have assumed office since to offer context, and acts need amendments periodically to behave better is what this column gathers from its announcement.
Even old carpets need a good beating as the saying goes.
The invite letter continues to inform, policy amendment suggestions were presented to Cabinet on September 3, 2024 and at said meeting, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail asked for engagement sessions with ROS members, so that they are aware and as such there is inclusivity.
A bit like when my headmaster informed us on our first day of secondary education that our school canes students.
By being made aware, apparently the whacks were inclusive. With every strike, the fair minister, the ministry’s profound sense of fair play and ROS’ innate fairness coursed through my hind parts because I was informed prior that it was so.
It was thus an inclusivity by decree.
That’s how 200 of us ended up on the morning of January 25 at the home ministry’s auditorium in its majestic Hartamas complex.
Seasoned players sensing a game afoot showed up fearing the worst. Better to appear and experience a nothing session than be monumentally shocked later.
As it turned out, it was consequential.
As was expected, it took everyone by surprise.
ROS’ top brass explained six potential amendments but which for now are merely suggestions.
Each suggestion had explainers and justifications. Our limited collective intelligence struggled to accept that policies already submitted to Cabinet were just suggestions, similar to Spotify suggesting a playlist for the drive home after.
Since they were only suggestions, not final policy language, ROS felt it unnecessary for us to possess the proposals in paper or electronically.
The proposals later, first, what is the relationship between the ROS and societies?
The association and its referee
The Constitution guarantees the right to associate. Malaysians who share views, thoughts, preoccupations, passions or advocacies like sandpaper twerking or people mad about cucumbers can get together. Organised in a legal entity.
Act 832 tells Malaysians how to navigate the world of organisations; set them up, acquire members, manage membership, conduct activities and maintain safeguards.
ROS monitors and facilitates. A necessary conduit but not the master of the organisations.
Here’s a parallel example, the Securities Commission (SC) and Registrar of Companies (ROC) set rules, guidelines and conditions for companies but they do not own the companies which abide by their rules.
The regulator only ensures the industry works, in fact the regulator is not the centre of the financial universe, people are.
In the association galaxy, the ROS assists and records but at the centre are people. For them to associate, successfully or not.
Those mad about cucumbers could turn out to be useless at keeping the peelers in the right shelves and perhaps the sandpaper twerk-tweets are absolute angels at keeping forms and spreadsheets tight.
To try to is their constitutional right, and every other Malaysian’s.
As such, amendments to the Societies Act concerns all Malaysians, regardless whether they are in an association or not.
An engagement must be with all societies’ members, not just the representatives.
To achieve that, all members should be informed thoroughly for a suitable time and allowed to debate the minister’s suggestions inside their organisations. Their representatives can duly bring their voice to the forum.
The home minister was PKR’s secretary-general for more than a decade and appreciates the need to involve the masses in the engagement intelligibly and in a meaningful manner.
That messy January morning
At the engagement session on January 25, the invited representatives got hit with a double whammy, the suggestions were shown to them on the spot and they had no time or opportunity to consult their membership or even senior leadership.
It was designed to put the representatives like myself at a disadvantage.
We were disabled from engaging as equals and were raising queries based on what we remembered from the slides — during the Q&A the presentation was not on display.
Some representatives managed to take photos with their phones. I was stupid to think when someone wants to discourse with me, they’d be polite enough to hand me a copy of what is to be discussed.
I was even stupider to assume they’d share the minutes of the forum for future reference and any further deliberations.
My recollection — my best recollection purely from memory — of the suggestions:
a) Disciplinary boards are mandatory
b) Organisation registrations renewed every three years
c) All fundraising requires ROS written approval
d) Only a fourth of revenues to be utilised for salaries
The other two escape me.
These are serious suggestions.
An additional body is to be set up and manned, the existentialist threat of dissolution, the bother to factor ROS approval for every fundraising in the execution chart and emergent capacity limitations thanks to spending caps.
Every one of them requires separate and prolonged scrutiny.
The ROS thinks otherwise.
It is not unwise to speculate that the engagement sessions are merely rubber-stamping exercises, and that the only thing the ROS is focused on was two; one to have electronic registration lists to indicate numerical support and two, a group photo at the end to evocate visual support to validate the exercise.
How cruel.
While the ROS folks are civil servants doing their paid jobs, organisations are thankless places where volunteers contribute time separate from work and family to realise gains for their associations.
While to the civil servants it’s only more forms to fill, for the passion-dependent members of societies overburdened by regular life, one more form is what breaks the camel’s back.
It is hurdle after hurdle, to associate. The ROS being the employed end of the equation may want to ease the process for the hundreds of thousands of volunteer members in thousands of societies than maintain a cheeky imperviousness to the task confronted by Malaysians to keep societies afloat.
And when it comes to changes to the Societies Act, display a high degree of conscientiousness so that the higher purpose of the Constitution is protected, to preserve Malaysians’ right to associate, or twerk.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
