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

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).