PKR Youth wants the National Civics Department to disband the National Civics Bureau (BTN) instead of rebranding it to suit current needs as announced by minister Azalina Othman.

PKR Youth secretary Ahmad Syukri Che Ab Razab said rebranding was pointless as BTN was still spewing lies about the opposition despite the government’s 2009 promise to re-jig BTN’s curriculum.

In 2009, then minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Abdul Aziz had said the government would amend the curriculum to suit the 1Malaysia concept following complaints of indoctrination and racial propaganda.

“What was the result of the amendment? In 2015, a leaked slide from a BTN programme showed that lies are still being spread about political enemies,” he said.

“The slides are enough to show that BTN has not changed to meet the goal of building a plural nation,” he said in a statement.

Among others, the slides - sourced from the BTN's own website - accused DAP elders of being anti-Malay while youth activists as a threat to national security.

He said allowing BTN's existence was an abuse of taxpayers’ funds given that it was merely a propaganda machine for BN.

BTN was allocated RM58.6 million in 2015.

Syukri said the 2015 slides were not too different from the ones presented when he attended a BTN programme as a schoolboy in 2004.

Then, he said, the late PAS spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat was “smeared as an Islamic extremist”.

“Why should we have faith in this rebranding exercise, if such lies happened in 2004 and again in 2015?” he asked.