KOPITALK LEGCO TRACKER  |  22nd Legislative Council Session — Final Day

 

 

 

Day Eleven: When the Session Ends,

Look at What It Left Unsaid About the Family.

KopiTalk with MHO  •  Saturday, 28 March 2026  •  22nd LegCo, Day Eleven  |  Final Day

 

 

SOCIAL MEDIA TEASER

Divorce cases rose 26 per cent in nine years. The OKU Complex has been planned since 2011. There is still no building. Elders are being abandoned. Young people cannot afford to start families. On the final day of this session, the chamber touched all of these. But the question underneath them — the one nobody quite named — is this: what is happening to the Brunei family? And what is at the root of it?

 

 

 

Damage does not always arrive loudly. It does not always come with drama or public collapse. Often, it works quietly from the inside, while the surface still looks intact. You do not fully notice it until the day you press your hand against something that should be solid — and feel it give way.

 

This column does not use that image lightly. And it does not use it to condemn. It uses it because it is the most honest description of what the final day of the 22nd Legislative Council session — taken together with everything this session has surfaced over eleven days — quietly revealed about the condition of the Brunei family institution.

 

Not the family as an idea.

 

The family as a lived reality.

 

The family in the home where a mother is still photocopying textbooks for a child with visual impairment. The family where a civil servant has been on half pay for six years and the bills have not stopped. The family where a marriage entered carefully, under a thorough registration system, still ended in a Syariah court — because financial stress, exhaustion, and the absence of support structures eventually did what no marriage guidance document could prevent.

 

The session's final day raised marriage verification, elder abandonment, OKU welfare, women's empowerment, and the protection of children born outside marriage. Each was treated as a separate issue. Each received a separate answer.

 

But they are not separate.

 

They are the same story — told from different angles, by different people, about the same underlying condition.

 

The Brunei family is under pressure it was not designed to carry alone. And the structures that should have been sharing that load have, for years, remained in planning, in review, or in transition.

 

A nation's resilience lives in its families first. When families weaken

quietly — not dramatically, but steadily — the nation's roots begin to loosen.

 

That is the conversation Brunei needs to have.

 

The Symptoms Are Real. But They Are Not the Root.

 

Divorce cases in Brunei rose from 469 in 2013 to 593 in 2022 — a 26 per cent increase in nine years. The Islamic Da'wah Centre identified the main causes: financial stress, neglect of responsibilities, and changing social norms around women's ability to leave a marriage that is not working.

 

Out-of-wedlock births, while declining — and the Religious Affairs Minister's data on Day Eleven showed a genuine downward trend from 378 cases in 2019 to 202 in 2024 — still represent thousands of children over eight years growing up outside the full structure of recognised family. Elder abandonment is rising. Single motherhood is increasing. Youth unemployment stands at 18 per cent — the highest in the region — meaning many young people are delaying marriage, delaying family formation, and entering adulthood with financial anxiety already built in.

 

These are the symptoms.

 

And the temptation — in a legislative chamber, in a policy document, in a ministerial answer — is to treat the symptom.

 

Strengthen the marriage verification process.

 

Study a legal liability framework for elder care.

 

Finalise the Women's Action Plan.

 

Form a project team for the OKU Complex.

 

Each of these responses is reasonable on its own terms.

 

None of them fully addresses the root.

 

The deeper issue is this: the Brunei family has been sheltered for decades — genuinely, generously sheltered — but not always systematically strengthened.

 

The model of governance has been one of provision. The state provides. The citizen receives. Subsidies, housing, healthcare, education — real benefits, genuinely delivered.

 

But provision is not the same as enablement.

 

A family that receives support is not necessarily a family that has been built to remain resilient when that support is reduced, delayed, or simply insufficient to meet the scale of the pressure it faces.

 

When the economy shifts — when diversification brings uncertainty, when the private sector is still maturing, when costs rise and wages do not keep pace — the family is suddenly asked to be strong in ways it was never systematically prepared to be.

 

And it is asked to be strong precisely at the moment when the support structures it depends on are still, after years of planning, not yet ready.

Provision is not the same as enablement. A family that receives support is not automatically a family that has been equipped to absorb prolonged pressure.

 

The OKU Complex — And What Fifteen Years Really Means

 

The plan to build a dedicated complex for organisations supporting persons with disabilities was first initiated in 2011. The project team was formed on 30 January 2024. There is still no building.

 

Fifteen years.

 

In that time, the children who needed that facility in 2011 are now adults. The parents who were managing their care then are now elderly themselves — some of them, perhaps, among those whose abandonment another member was asking about on the same day.

 

The minister was honest. He said the 2011 assumptions no longer reflect 2026 realities. Ecosystems change. Lessons are learned from other countries. Cost-benefit analyses need to be recalibrated.

 

All of this is true.

 

But here is what fifteen years also means.

 

It means fifteen years of families absorbing, alone and at home, the care burden that the state itself acknowledged it should be helping to share.

 

It means fifteen years of mothers who could not work full time because there was no facility. Fifteen years of siblings who restructured their own life plans around a family member's needs. Fifteen years of caregivers who aged alongside the people they were caring for, without relief, without respite, without the institutional support that was coming — always coming — just not yet here.

 

This is what governance inertia costs when it is applied to the most vulnerable.

 

It is not just a delayed project.

 

It is a life lived inside the gap between what was planned and what was built.

 

And it sits inside a larger question about the Maqasid Syariah — the higher objectives of Islamic governance — that Brunei has made central to its national philosophy.

 

The protection of family.

 

The protection of the mind.

 

The protection of wealth.

 

The protection of life.

 

These are not abstract principles.

 

They are the exact things under pressure in every story Day Eleven told.

 

A government that takes MIB seriously as a living philosophy — not only as a framework for ceremonial affirmation — should be measuring its performance against these standards, not just against the percentage of budget utilised.

 

The Elder, the Marriage, and the Transmission Gap

 

There is a deep connection between the rising divorce rate and the rising abandonment of elders that Day Eleven's questions — taken together — begin to reveal.

 

When marriages break down, family structures change. When family structures change, the transmission of values — of what it means to honour parents, to carry family obligations, to see the elderly not as a burden but as a trust — can also weaken over time.

 

Not deliberately.

 

Not maliciously.

 

But structurally.

 

The vessel that carries those values begins to crack, and over a generation, some of what it was meant to pass on quietly leaks away.

 

MIB places the family as the first institution of tarbiyah — moral formation. It is where a child first learns what is owed to parents, to community, to God.

 

If that institution is under sustained pressure, if its foundations are being worn down by economic anxiety and inadequate support, the formation it provides will also come under strain.

 

Not because the faith is weakening.

 

But because the family carrying the faith is carrying too much else at the same time.

 

The minister's answer on elder abandonment was careful and compassionate. He spoke about Islamic obligations to parents. He spoke about the Successful Ageing Action Plan. He said legal liability for family members will be studied — but carefully, because the balance between enforcement and family harmony requires wisdom.

 

He is right that it requires wisdom.

 

But wisdom, in this case, also requires honesty about what is producing the abandonment.

 

It is not simply a failure of love.

 

It is often a failure of support.

 

The sandwich generation — the men and women in their forties and fifties managing children, parents, mortgages, careers, and economic uncertainty at the same time — are not necessarily abandoning their parents because they do not care.

 

Many are reaching a point where they are running out of capacity.

 

A legal framework that punishes the outcome without addressing the cause is not wisdom. It is, at best, a deterrent. At worst, it adds legal burden to human exhaustion.

 

The more urgent intervention is the one that has already spent fifteen years in planning: the infrastructure, the facilities, the respite care, the community support — the things that would allow a family to honour its obligations without being quietly destroyed by them.

It is not simply a failure of love. It is often a failure of support. Many in the sandwich generation are not abandoning their parents because they do not care. They are reaching a point where they are running out of capacity.

 

The Good News That Must Also Be Said

 

This column would not be doing its job if it only named the pressures without acknowledging what is working.

 

The Religious Affairs Minister's data on Day Eleven was genuinely encouraging. Out-of-wedlock births declined from 378 in 2019 to 202 in 2024. The ministry's enforcement operations — 634 in 2025 alone — and its prevention programmes — 25 sessions reaching over 3,000 people last year — are producing measurable results.

 

The downward trend is real.

 

It reflects effort, commitment, and the genuine effectiveness of a community that still takes its values seriously.

 

The zakat system, as this session's earlier discussion showed, is also providing meaningful protection for vulnerable children. The 262 former zakat recipients who now generate their own income — mentioned in Day Eight — is a real achievement. 

 

The PROPAZ skills programme, the succession planning policy for farms, the Caregiver Allowance amendment to the Old Age Pension Act — these are not nothing.

 

They are genuine steps in the right direction.

 

The problem is not that nothing is being done.

 

The problem is the pace.

 

And the consistent gap between the scale of the need and the scale of the response.

 

A building that takes fifteen years to move from planning to construction is not failing because people do not care. It is failing because the system is not structured to move at the pace that human need demands.

 

What the Speaker Said — and Why It Matters

 

The Yang Di-Pertua closed the 22nd Legislative Council session on Day Eleven with a formal address that was, in its quiet way, the most important speech of the final day.

 

He thanked members. He noted the unusual circumstances — eleven days of sitting through Ramadan and Syawal. He reflected on the 215 questions answered, the 4 motions passed, and the 4 ministerial statements heard.

 

And then he said something that deserves to travel beyond the chamber.

 

He asked that written responses to unanswered questions be published on ministry websites — not just delivered privately to the members who asked them. He said the public should be able to follow the progress. He said other countries do this. He said it should happen here too.

 

That is the Speaker of the Legislative Council acknowledging publicly what this series has documented across eleven days:

the gap between what is said in the chamber and what reaches the people the chamber is supposed to serve.

 

When the Speaker names it, it is no longer just a commentator's observation.

 

It becomes an institutional admission.

 

He also said this — and it should travel with the rest of the session's record:

 

"I hope whatever has been planned, even in the face of global challenges, there are still opportunities to improve and increase our capability together."

 

Together.

 

That word is the key.

 

Not the government delivering to the people.

 

Not the people waiting for the government.

 

Together — which is what the Whole of Nation approach was always supposed to mean, and what governance inertia has too often prevented from fully taking shape.

 

The Root. Not the Symptom.

 

Eleven days. Two hundred and fifteen questions. One budget. BND6.3 billion.

 

And at the end of it, a country that is genuinely trying — with real commitment, real intention, and real capability — to be what it says it wants to be.

 

The resilience, sovereignty, and dignity of the Bruneian people — the things MIB is fundamentally about — do not live first in budget allocations or policy frameworks.

They live in families.

 

In the home where a father keeps his promise to his ageing parents. In the marriage where two people navigate difficulty because they have the support to stay. In the child with a disability who grows up knowing that her country built something for her — not fifteen years too late, but when she needed it.

 

The damage this column refers to is not moral decay.

 

Bruneians have not stopped loving their families.

 

They have not stopped honouring their faith.

 

The damage is structural — the slow erosion of the conditions under which families can do what they were always meant to do.

 

And structural damage, unlike moral failure, has a structural remedy.

 

The remedy is not more plans.

 

It is not more frameworks.

 

It is not more ministerial statements that acknowledge the problem before promising a study that will be completed in due course.

 

The remedy is delivery.

 

At the pace of human need.

 

Before the divorce — not after the marriage has already broken.

 

Before the elder is abandoned — not after the family has already run out of capacity.

 

Before the OKU child grows up — not when the building is finally ready fifteen years later.

 

A nation that takes care of its families takes care of itself.

 

A nation that plans for its families a decade too late is spending social capital it is not replenishing.

 

That is the conversation the 22nd Legislative Council session — across eleven days, through 215 questions — has been quietly building toward.

 

Not as an accusation.

 

As a reckoning.

 

Because the families are still there.

 

Still trying.

 

Still holding on.

 

They deserve a system that moves at the pace of their lives — not at the pace of its own comfort.

 

 

 

Eleven days. One session. BND6.3 billion.

Two hundred and fifteen questions.

And perhaps the most important one was never formally asked:

 

What are we doing to the family —

and what will we do before it is too late?

 

 

 

KopiTalk LegCo Tracker — 22nd Legislative Council Session

Days 1 to 11  |  11–28 March 2026  |  Series complete.

What was said, what mattered, and what the public is still waiting for.

  

KOPITALK WITH MHO

Kolum oleh Malai Hassan Othman

SUSULAN  |  Kesinambungan daripada “Perayaan Siapa Sebenarnya?”

 

 

MMN Telah Bersuara. Soalnya, Apa Selepas Ini?

Bandar Seri Begawan  |  Mac 2026

 

 

Nota Editor: Ini adalah kolum ketiga dalam siri mengenai pameran pengguna bermusim di Brunei. Yang pertama, “Perayaan Pengguna Brunei: Lonjakan Wang Tunai — Tetapi Siapa yang Benar-Benar Menang?”, diterbitkan pada tahun 2025 dan mengkaji ke mana wang perayaan mengalir. Yang kedua, “Perayaan Siapa Sebenarnya?”, diterbitkan awal bulan ini, menyorot bagaimana peniaga tempatan semakin terpinggir dalam ekspo dan bazar musim perayaan. Sejak kolum kedua itu diterbitkan, isu ini telah dibawa ke dalam Majlis Mesyuarat Negara, keterangan baharu daripada lapangan telah tiba dari Kuala Belait, dan satu kebimbangan berkaitan pematuhan halal telah disuarakan oleh orang ramai. Kolum ini menangani ketiga-tiga perkembangan tersebut.

 

Tanya mana-mana peniaga tempatan bagaimana musim perayaan lalu berjalan, dan berikan mereka sedikit masa sebelum menjawab.

Kerana jawapannya bukan mudah.

Khemah-khemah didirikan. Orang ramai pun berpusu datang. Wang berpindah tangan.

Dan apabila semuanya selesai, apabila kem-kem itu dilipat dan lori-lori bergerak pulang, terlalu ramai peniaga tempatan yang tertinggal dengan satu persoalan diam di sudut hati — adakah musim perayaan ini pernah benar-benar milik mereka?

Persoalan itu bukan baharu. Ia telah lama bergema. Dan pada 20 Mac lalu, ia akhirnya bergema di dalam Dewan Majlis Mesyuarat Negara — apabila Yang Berhormat Pengiran Haji Isa bin Pengiran Haji Aliuddin berkata dengan tegas: penganjur-penganjur ekspo dan bazar mesti melibatkan syarikat tempatan.

Pelita Brunei merakamkan tajuknya. Kata-kata itu kini tersimpan dalam rekod rasmi negara.

Maka persoalannya beralih. Bukan lagi sama ada masalah ini wujud — ia memang wujud. Soalnya kini: apakah yang akan dilakukan?

 

Apa yang Dikatakan Orang Ramai

 

Satu mesej yang diterima kolum ini menceritakan hal yang pedih: sebuah acara akan datang di Kuala Belait pada bulan April ini — tinggal beberapa minggu sahaja lagi — telah memperuntukkan hampir 95 peratus tapaknya kepada peniaga dari luar. Peniaga tempatan yang memohon dihalang dengan alasan tempat sudah penuh. Menurut aduan, ternyata tempat itu memang penuh — tetapi bukan dengan mereka.

 

Ini bukan peristiwa yang terpencil. Ia satu corak. Dan ia semakin ketara setiap musim.

 

Ada satu lagi persoalan yang terus-menerus muncul dalam perbualan ini, persoalan yang belum pernah dijawab secara langsung oleh mana-mana pihak berkuasa: adakah sesetengah peniaga luar ini masuk ke Brunei atas visa pelancong untuk berniaga? Jika benar, ini bukan kawasan kelabu atau ketidakjelasan undang-undang. Ini adalah lubang dalam sistem yang sedang digunakan, musim demi musim, di hadapan mata semua orang.

 

Pelawat atas visa pelancong tidak dibenarkan menjalankan kegiatan perniagaan. Jika ekspo dan bazar perayaan telah menjadi laluan tidak rasmi bagi peniaga jangka pendek untuk beroperasi tanpa dokumentasi perniagaan yang betul, ini adalah urusan pihak berkuasa imigresen dan perdagangan — bukan sebagai rungutan politik, tetapi sebagai soal integriti pengawalseliaan yang paling asas.

 

Apa yang Angka-angka Ceritakan

 

Kolum ini pernah melihat data jualan runcit yang diterbitkan oleh Jabatan Perancangan Ekonomi dan Statistik. Ia wajar diteliti semula.

 

Pada suku kedua tahun 2021 — ketika sempadan ditutup dan peniaga luar tidak dapat masuk — jualan runcit di Brunei mencapai BND488.2 juta, angka tertinggi dalam tahun-tahun kebelakangan ini. Sempadan dibuka semula. Arah aliran berbalik. Menjelang suku kedua 2025, angka itu jatuh kepada BND394.7 juta — yang paling rendah dalam sekurang-kurangnya lapan tahun, bahkan di bawah paras pra-pandemik.

Ini bukan turun naik biasa.

Ini satu arah yang jelas.

Perkaitan ini mungkin tidak sempurna secara linear, dan kolum ini tidak mendakwa demikian. Tetapi apabila apa yang ditunjukkan oleh data selari secara konsisten dengan apa yang dialami oleh peniaga di lapangan, menjadi sukar untuk berpaling daripada kenyataan itu.

Musim perayaan penting di sini kerana apa yang dipertaruhkan. Kurnia Peribadi sahaja mengalirkan lebih BND17 juta ke tangan rakyat dalam minggu-minggu menjelang Hari Raya. Niatnya jelas: untuk menyokong kehidupan rakyat Brunei semasa perayaan. Apabila sebahagian besar daripada wang itu mengalir terus ke tangan peniaga yang akan pulang selepas acara tamat, natijah yang diharapkan itu pun terhakis.

 

Apabila Halal Menjadi Soal Tanda Tanya

Daripada semua yang dikongsikan dengan kolum ini, inilah yang paling memerlukan pertimbangan yang paling teliti — kerana ia menyentuh sesuatu yang tidak dipandang ringan oleh Brunei, dan tidak seharusnya dipandang ringan.

Orang ramai telah meluahkan satu pemerhatian yang membimbangkan: bahawa pematuhan halal di acara-acara bermusim ini kelihatan beroperasi atas standard yang berbeza daripada waktu-waktu lain dalam setahun. Kebimbangan itu bukan sekadar mengenai kehadiran peniaga luar — ia mengenai hakikat bahawa kehadiran mereka nampaknya bersamaan dengan pelonggaran pengawasan yang biasanya diharapkan oleh rakyat Brunei sebagai satu kewajipan agama dan dasar negara.

Untuk lebih tepat: orang ramai telah menyatakan bahawa gerai-gerai makanan di sesetengah ekspo dan bazar kelihatan beroperasi tanpa pensijilan halal yang wajib dipegang oleh mana-mana premis makanan tetap di Brunei. Yang lain pula mempersoalkan sama ada mekanisme pengawasan — penyelia halal, pemeriksaan mengejut, pengesahan bahan-bahan dan proses penyediaan — dikenakan ke atas peniaga acara jangka pendek dengan ketelitian yang sama seperti yang dikenakan di tempat lain.

Jika pemerhatian itu tepat, ini bukan sekadar ketidakkonsistenan pentadbiran kecil. Piawaian halal di Brunei bukan satu pilihan atau saranan. Ia adalah komitmen perlembagaan dan keagamaan. Ia terpakai sama rata di hotel bertaraf lima bintang, di gerai tepi jalan, dan di khemah di bazar perayaan. Ia tidak berhenti buat sementara semasa sesebuah acara berlangsung. Ia tidak lentur untuk menampung logistik peniaga jangka pendek.

MUIB memegang mandat dan tanggungjawab untuk memastikan integriti halal dikuatkuasakan di seluruh Brunei. Jika acara-acara bermusim ini kini beroperasi dalam zon kelabu — di mana peraturan wujud tetapi penguatkuasaan tidak konsisten — zon kelabu itu perlu ditutup.

Bukan secara senyap.

Dan bukan secara beransur-ansur.

Sekarang.

Orang ramai telah mengajukan kebimbangan ini. Ia layak mendapat jawapan yang jelas, terbuka, dan datang daripada pihak yang bertanggungjawab untuk menegakkannya.

 

Jurang Akauntabiliti

 

Inilah masalah praktikalnya. Apabila ditanya kementerian atau agensi mana yang bertanggungjawab memastikan ekspo perniagaan melibatkan peniaga tempatan secara adil, jawapannya tidak jelas. Adakah ia Kementerian Kewangan dan Ekonomi? Kementerian Hal Ehwal Dalam Negeri? Jabatan imigresen? Persatuan-persatuan industri?

Jawapan yang jujur mungkin: semua mereka — dan tiada satu pun dengan cukup jelas.

Isu-isu yang merentasi pelbagai bidang kuasa lazimnya tidak menjadi milik sesiapa secara khusus. Dan apabila tiada sesiapa yang memiliki sesuatu masalah, masalah itu cenderung untuk kekal tepat di tempat ia berada.

Apa yang diperlukan bukan satu jawatankuasa baharu atau satu kajian yang lain. Yang diperlukan adalah pendirian dasar yang jelas dan berkekalan — satu yang menyatakan: acara-acara perniagaan yang diadakan di Brunei, menggunakan venue Brunei dan kalendar perayaan Brunei untuk menarik pengguna Brunei, mesti memberikan ruang yang bermakna — bukan sekadar simbolik — kepada peniaga Brunei.

Dan ia perlu menyatakan dengan jelas bahawa mereka yang datang ke sini untuk berniaga berbuat demikian atas terma yang betul — berdokumen dengan wajar, bersijil halal, dan mematuhi setiap syarat yang diwajibkan ke atas perniagaan tempatan.

 

Peribahasa Itu Belum Berubah

 

Ada peribahasa Melayu yang pernah digunakan dalam kolum ini, dan ia masih terlalu tepat untuk ditinggalkan.

Kera di hutan disusui, anak di rumah mati kelaparan.

Ia satu gambaran yang keras. Tetapi kekerasan itu bukan buatan — ia mencerminkan hanyutan perlahan sebuah sistem yang tidak lagi seiring dengan apa yang ia direka untuk lindungi.

Peniaga-peniaga tempatan yang menghubungi kolum ini bukan orang yang suka merungut. Mereka adalah pemilik perniagaan yang telah memilih untuk kekal di sini, melabur di bumi ini, membayar lesen dan sewa dan gaji pekerja mereka, tahun demi tahun, musim demi musim. Mereka meminta satu perkara sahaja: peluang yang adil dalam musim perayaan yang sepatutnya paling bermakna bagi mereka.

Dan mereka — bersama setiap pengguna Muslim di negara ini — meminta sesuatu yang amat asas: bahawa apabila mereka membeli makanan di bazar di negara mereka sendiri, mereka boleh yakin ia memenuhi standard yang sama seperti di tempat-tempat lain.

 

Majlis Mesyuarat Negara sudah bersuara.

Rakyat di lapangan sudah bersuara.

Angka-angka pun sudah bersuara.

Soalnya kini mudah.

Adakah sistem akan bertindak balas — atau khemah-khemah akan didirikan semula, dan tiada apa yang berubah?

 

 

 

KopiTalk with MHO

Kolum Kepentingan Awam  |  Mac 2026

  

KOPITALK WITH MHO

Column by Malai Hassan Othman

FOLLOW-UP  |  Continuation of “Whose Festival Is It, Anyway?”

 

 

The Chamber Has Spoken. Now What?

 

This column is the third in a series. The first, “Brunei’s Consumer Fairs: A Cash Surge—But Who Really Wins?”, was published in 2025. The second, “Whose Festival Is It, Anyway?”, appeared earlier this month. Both examined how local vendors are being crowded out of Brunei’s seasonal consumer fairs and trade expos. Since that second piece was published, the issue has entered the Legislative Council chamber. The street has been saying it for months. The numbers have been pointing in the same direction. Now the chamber has said it out loud. The only thing missing is the government’s response.

 

Bandar Seri Begawan  |  March 2026

 

 

Editor's Note: This is the third column in a series on Brunei’s seasonal consumer fairs. The first, “Brunei’s Consumer Fairs: A Cash Surge—But Who Really Wins?”, was published in 2025 and examined where the money goes during the festive season. The second, “Whose Festival Is It, Anyway?”, published earlier this month, looked at how local vendors are being crowded out of trade expos and bazaars by outside traders. Since that piece appeared, the issue has entered the Legislative Council chamber, new ground-level testimony has emerged from Kuala Belait, and a separate but related concern about halal compliance has been raised by members of the public. This column addresses all three.

 

Ask any local trader how the last festive season went, and give them a moment before you expect an answer.

 

Because it is not a simple one.

 

The tents go up. The crowds come. The money moves.

 

And then, when it is all over and the stalls are packed away, too many of them are left with the same quiet question — was any of that really meant for us?

 

That question has been circulating in WhatsApp groups, in coffee shop conversations, in messages sent to this column. And on the 20th of March, it finally found its way into the Legislative Council chamber, where Yang Berhormat Pengiran Haji Isa bin Pengiran Haji Aliuddin said plainly what many had been saying privately: expo and bazaar organisers must involve local companies.

 

Pelita Brunei carried the headline. The words are now on the record.

 

So the question shifts. Not whether the problem exists — it does. The question now is what happens next.

 

What People Are Actually Saying

 

One message shared with this column captures it as well as anything. An upcoming event in Kuala Belait this April — and we are talking about April, weeks from now — has already allocated around 95 percent of its stalls to vendors from outside. Local traders who applied were told the space was full. When they dug a little deeper, they found that the space was indeed full — just not with them.

 

This is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern. And it is getting harder to explain away.

 

There is also a question that keeps coming up in these conversations, one that nobody in authority seems to want to answer directly: are some of these vendors entering Brunei on tourist visas to trade? Because if they are, that is not a grey area or an ambiguity in the rules. That is a hole in the system, and it is being used.

 

Visitors on tourist visas are not permitted to conduct commercial activity. If seasonal expos and bazaars have quietly become a route through which short-term traders operate outside proper commercial documentation, that is a matter for the immigration and trade authorities — not as a political complaint, but as a straightforward question of whether the rules apply equally to everyone.

 

 What the Numbers Say

 

This column has previously examined retail sales data from the Department of Economic Planning and Statistics. It is worth revisiting.

In Q2 of 2021, when borders were closed and foreign vendors could not enter, retail sales in Brunei reached BND488.2 million — the highest figure in recent years. The borders reopened. The trend reversed. By Q2 2025, the number had dropped to BND394.7 million. That is the lowest in at least eight years. It is below pre-pandemic levels.

 

That is not a fluctuation.

 

That is a direction.

 

The relationship is not perfectly linear, and this column is not claiming it is. But when what the data shows lines up consistently with what traders on the ground are experiencing, it becomes difficult to look away.

 

The festive season matters here because of what is at stake. The Kurnia Peribadi alone puts over BND17 million into people's hands in the weeks before Hari Raya. That money is meant to move through the local economy. When a large portion of it flows straight out — into the hands of vendors who will be gone by the time the celebrations are over — the intended effect gets diluted.

 

The Halal Question That Cannot Be Left Unanswered

 

Of everything raised with this column, this is the one that requires the most care — and the most clarity.

 

People have been asking whether halal standards at these seasonal events are being applied with the same rigour as they are everywhere else in Brunei. The concern is specific: that food vendors at certain expos and bazaars appear to operate without the certification that any permanent food establishment would be required to hold. 

 

That oversight — the spot checks, the verification of ingredients, the independence of halal supervisors — seems, to those who have observed it, to relax during these events in a way it does not relax at other times of year.

 

If that observation is accurate, it is not a minor administrative inconsistency. Halal compliance in Brunei is not a preference. It is not a recommendation. It is a religious and constitutional commitment, and it does not carry an exemption clause for the duration of a trade expo.

 

The same standard that applies to a hotel kitchen, a roadside stall, or a school canteen applies to a tent at a festive bazaar. That standard does not pause because the event is only five days long. It does not bend because a vendor has come from far away and the logistics are complicated.

 

MUIB holds the mandate and the responsibility for ensuring halal integrity across Brunei. If seasonal commercial events are currently operating in a grey zone — where the rules exist but the enforcement is inconsistent — that grey zone needs to close.

 

Not quietly.

 

And not gradually.

 

Now.

 

The public has asked this question openly. It deserves an equally open answer.

 

The Accountability Gap

 

Here is the practical problem. When you ask which ministry or agency is responsible for ensuring that commercial expos involve local traders fairly, the answer is not obvious. Is it the Ministry of Finance and Economy? The Ministry of Home Affairs? The immigration department? The industry associations?

 

The honest answer is probably: all of them, and none of them clearly enough.

 

Issues that stretch across departments tend to belong to nobody in particular. And when nobody owns a problem, the problem tends to stay exactly where it is.

 

What is needed is not another study or another committee. It is a clear policy position — one with a name attached to it and a timeline behind it — that says: commercial events held in Brunei, using Brunei's venues and Brunei's festive calendar to attract Brunei's consumers, must give meaningful space to Brunei's traders. Not a token booth in the corner. Meaningful space.

 

And it should say clearly that those who come here to trade must do so on the proper terms — documented, certified, and compliant in every way that local businesses are required to be.

 

The Proverb Has Not Changed

 

There is an old Malay saying that this column has used before, and it fits too well to leave out.

 

Kera di hutan disusui, anak di rumah mati kelaparan.

 

The monkey in the jungle is fed, while the child at home goes hungry.

 

It is a hard image. But the hardness is not manufactured — it comes from watching a slow drift in a system that was built to protect something, and has simply not kept pace with what it set out to do.

 

The local traders who have written to this column are not asking for special treatment. They are not anti-competition or anti-foreign. They are people who chose to stay, to invest here, to pay their licences and their taxes and their staff, year after year. They are asking for one thing: a fair chance at their own festive season.

 

And they are asking something that every Muslim consumer in Brunei has the right to ask — that when they buy food at a bazaar in this country, they can trust that it meets the same standard they expect everywhere else.

 

LegCo has spoken.

 

The street has spoken.

 

The numbers have spoken.

 

The question now is simple.

 

Will the system respond — or will the tents go up again, and nothing change?

 

 

 

KopiTalk with MHO

Public Interest Column  |  March 2026