Up To The Government To Review Article 121 Of The Constitution, says Dr. Mahathir
Bernama – 24 January 2006
KUALA LUMPUR, It is up to the government to review Article 121 of the Federal Constitution to give the civil courts power in hearing matters on Islam, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Monday.
The former prime minister said although people could make calls for a review, the government would normally have the final say.
Commenting on the current debate on laws affecting the rights of non-Muslims, Dr Mahathir told reporters that as Malaysia is a free country, people could make a lot of calls but the government would decide whether to amend the constitution in solving problems related to religion.
Earlier, Dr Mahathir presented his inaugural address at the "Maju Talk" Series on "The Global Political-Economic Scenario Beyond 2020, its Ramifications and Implications with Special Reference to Malaysia", here.
He believed Malaysians would have to resolve the problem whether to amend or not the constitution. During his talk, Dr Mahathir envisaged that multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious societies would be the main features of many countries in the world beyond 2020 as a result of mixed parentage due to mobility caused by globalisation.

However, the question that need to be addressed was how countries would handle problems arising from the situation, and for Malaysia it had a lot of experiences in managing multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious society.
On the economic front, he forecasted that the economic swing would be towards the East especially centred on Japan, China, Korea and India as they would be the great economic powers in the future.
Malaysia, he said, could take advantage of the situation by expanding its economic cake.

Dr Mahathir also predicted that more nuclear weapons would be available in the world beyond 2020 as the race for weapons of mass destruction was still continuing.

The talk was organised by Maju Group, a company involved largely in education and transportation businesses.
Source: BERNAMA | www.bernama.com