Malaysian minister spoke about global social contract, not renewing nation's founding principles

Malaysia's Human Resources Minister Steven Sim called for a renewal of the global social contract -- how states should act towards one another -- not one of the country's founding principles, contrary to social media posts that shared a misleading news headline about the minister's speech at the International Labour Conference in June 2024. Malaysia's social contract, which granted citizenship to the country's ethnic minorities while guaranteeing the "special position" of indigenous Malays, was not mentioned in Sim's speech. Local broadcaster Astro Awani has also deleted the misleadingly headlined article.

"Give them an inch, they'll take a mile," read a Malay-language post shared on Facebook on June 14, 2024.

It included a screenshot of a news article by Malaysian news agency Bernama and published by broadcaster Astro Awani, with a Malay-language headline that reads, "It is important to renew the social contract that can bring justice to all".

The image includes a picture of Malaysia's Human Resources Minister Steven Sim (archived link). Text below the minister's photo reads: "HRH and Malay Sultans. Please pay attention."

Malaysia was founded upon the basis of a "social contract" that granted citizenship to the Chinese and Indian ethnic minorities, while also guaranteeing that preferential policies for the majority Malay population and indigenous people native to the states of Sabah and Sarawak remained intact (archived link).

Similar posts also surfaced elsewhere on Facebook here, here and here.

But Sim was in fact speaking about a social contract between states, not the political system in Malaysia.

'Global social contract'

Keyword searches found the corresponding article published by Astro Awani on June 13 has since been deleted (archived link).

In response to a post on X criticising the headline, an Astro Awani reporter explained the article had been taken down as soon as the news outlet received a phone call from the minister's office about the error (archived link).

Astro Awani included Sim's remarks within another report about Malaysia's participation in the International Labour Conference published on June 16 (archived link).

On June 14, Sim uploaded the full recording of his speech at the International Labour Organization (ILO) event in Geneva two days earlier to his official X account (archived link).

"Please, friends, judge for yourself my full speech to the ILO about the "social contract" distorted by irresponsible parties. Let's fight slander and slanderers together," he wrote in the post.

He also uploaded clips of the speech to his Facebook and TikTok accounts (archived links here and here).

Nowhere in his speech does he mention the Malaysian social contract and it is clear he is speaking about global power structures.

The segment of his speech can be seen in a transcript shared by Malaysia's Human Resource Ministry on its official Facebook page here (archived link).

"The current growth model nationalises gains in the hands of the few superpowers, while imposing the burden of regulations, responsibilities, cost, and even lopsided morality upon the rest of the world -- this is the systematic disenfranchisement which the world has to dismantle if we want to renew our social contract," Sim said.

A full recording of Sim's speech can also be seen on the official conference website here (archived link).