According to The Star (Malaysia), recently, Malaysia's Minister of Home Affairs - Mr. Saifuddin Nasution Ismail - responded to the incident of FIFA sanctioning the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) and 7 naturalized players for using fake documents.
He said that FIFA's criteria are not the legal basis for determining Malaysian citizenship, and that the process of granting citizenship to players has been implemented in accordance with the Malaysian Constitution and law.
According to Mr. Saifuddin, all naturalization records are considered according to Article 19 of the Federal Constitution and the Civil procedure 1964. He emphasized three main conditions: the candidate must have legal residence in Malaysia, have good ethics and understand Malaysian.
The Malaysian Minister of Home Affairs added that the documents have been closely checked through many stages, from document verification, interviews to collecting biometric data before citizenship is granted.
This leader also affirmed that FIFA only has the right to handle football-related issues, while the decision to naturalize is under the authority of the Ministry of Home Affairs and must comply with the Constitution. He spoke out against imposing sports criteria on national citizenship laws.
However, in FIFA's 19-page disciplinary decision, it was announced that the birth certificate submitted by FAM had many inconsistent points with the original collected by FIFA, showing the ability to edit the document to create "oreign Malaysia".
While Malaysia is trying to protect the naturalization process as legal under national law, the incident is still extremely controversial in the football community
The FIFA penalty not only affects the national team but also raises big questions about how to operate between national laws and international sports standards.
