If the proposal for a second national consultative council (NCC) is imagined as a "council of wise men" to save the nation, then it deserves the thumbs down, according to an academic.

Stressing he is "all for dialogue and reconciliation", Penang Institute fellow Wong Chin Huat however said the NCC must not be modelled after its predecessor, which was headed by second prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein in the aftermath of the 1969 race riots.