COMMENT | Sometime this month in Parliament, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail is going to present constitutional amendments to misguidedly make it tougher - much tougher - for poor, underprivileged, stateless people to become citizens.

Our government leaders talk about oppression in other countries but consistently fail to look in our own backyards. The proposed new amendments make it very difficult for the stateless to find a home and potentially could involve hundreds of thousands of people.

So far, he has done nothing about other major amendments proposed for decades by PKR, the not-so-dominant dominant party in the ruling coalition government, of which he is incidentally a member, and which has been in PKR’s manifesto for several elections.

These would have rolled back draconian provisions in the law that have been used in the past to detain opposition leaders, jail and oppress politicians and NGO leaders, and stop free and fair discussion.