SIBU, June 9: Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak Baru (PBDSB) questions why the term “Dayak” has yet to be recognised since the matter was mentioned four years ago.
According to PBDSB secretary-general, Julius Enchana, there has been no action by the government since four years ago after the Federal Cabinet agreed to add the term “Dayak” into the list of races to be recognised, and this was the first step.
Julius said that government need to amends some laws in Parliament to get the term lawfully recognised.
He added that the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) would also be required to support Parliament’s decision and that when this is accomplised, the term “Dayak” can be consider to have force of law.
However, he lamented, there had been no action and development so far regarding this issue and worse still, Dayak leaders had not spoken about it since then.
“There is no action and our leaders just go silent about this.
“Now, we must give the power to this law. The term of “others” is just a mere step to ignore the “Dayak” or just to label them as non-Malay, Chinese and Indian,” Julius said in a statement.
Under the spirit of Malaysia Baru, PBDSB hoped that Parliament would approve the necessary amendments so that the term can be finally used and recognised.
“For DUN, whoever tables the motion, this thing should be done.
“We don’t want our race to be consider as illegal if we start to call ourselves “Dayak”.”
He also opined that the definition of ‘Natives’ in the Federal Constitution also needed to be reconsidered.
“This is not the first time PBDSB brought up this issue, as it seems that this solution (sic) had gone nowhere. We want action, not just merely talk,” he said. — DayakDaily
