KUALA LUMPUR: Communications and multimedia minister Saifuddin Abdullah has clarified that he was not the minister responsible for ratifying the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).
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However, he acknowledged that ICERD was contained in the Pakatan Harapan manifesto and mentioned by then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the United Nations in 2018.
“Ratification of (ICERD) is in the PH manifesto and was mentioned in the speech of the PM at the UN, but I was not the minister responsible for ICERD,” he tweeted last night.
He was commenting on a claim by DAP organising secretary Loke Siew Fook that the idea to ratify ICERD and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was Saifuddin’s and not that of DAP.
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On Nov 23, 2018, Saifuddin, who was then the foreign minister, was quoted as saying the government’s decision not to ratify ICERD was decided unanimously at a Cabinet meeting.
In his tweet, Saifuddin said the decision to ratify and later to withdraw from the Rome Statute had been decided by the Cabinet.
On April 5, 2019, Mahathir announced that Malaysia was withdrawing from the Rome Statute because of the confusion the issue had created in terms of politics and also from the ground.-BERNAMA