Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang in Petaling Jaya on Tuesday, 14^th July 2009: 

Ong Tee Keat should not provide third example of his being “Hero outside, coward inside” by securing Cabinet agreement tomorrow to modify its PPSMI decision last week by allowing optional use of English to teach maths and science in secondary schools from 2012

MCA President and Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat should not provide a third example of his being “Hero outside, coward inside” by securing Cabinet agreement tomorrow to modify its PPSMI decision last week by allowing optional use of English to teach mathematics and science in secondary schools from 2012.

I stand by my strong criticism of the Cabinet decision yesterday for the PPSMI decision, particularly for secondary schools from 2012, when I said that Malaysia will have the world’s most crazy educational system, where students in Form 4 in 2012 will have to switch to Bahasa Malaysia for mathematics and science in the last two years of secondary education, after nine years of learning these two subjects in English – again to switch back to English for the next five or six years for pre-university and tertiary education!

I challenge any Minister or even several Ministers at one time to a public debate in any language, whether Bahasa Malaysia, English or Chinese who dare to defend such a crazy system of nine years of mathematics and science in English from Std. 1 to Form 3, followed by two years in Bahasa Malaysia in Forms 4 and 5, and switch back again to English for the next five or six years of pre-university and tertiary education; how they could impose such a crazy educational system on millions of Malaysian students, even turning them into “guinea-pigs” not once but twice in their educational process!

Would these Ministers want their children to go through such educational turmoil and madness as to become guinea pigs twice in their primary, secondary and tertiary education?

I believe I can get majority support for my statement that those who want to impose such an educational system, requiring students to study the two subjects in English for nine years, then switch to Bahasa Malaysia in Forms 3 and 4, and switch back to English in pre-university and tertiary education for the next five to six years must have their heads examined as to whether they are fit to be in the Cabinet in the first place!

Ong Tee Keat should not provide a third example of being “Hero outside, Coward inside” on the Cabinet’s crazy decision on PPSMI.

Ong has already provided two such examples:

• His heroic boast “outside” Parliament when he returned from his junket to the Paris Air Show last month that he welcomed a full debate and prepared to face any questions in Parliament on the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal when he finally appeared in the second week of Parliament on June 22 to make his Ministerial statement. But once “inside” Parliament, he became a coward and refused to allow any question or interruption in his eight-minute “Ministerial non-statement” which did not reveal anything new on the PKFZ scandal.

• His “heroism” in exposing, and rightly, the RM30,000 “leakage” in the renovation SJKC Kung Yu in Muar in 2006, but his cowardice to “reveal all” about the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal. How many times is the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal compared to the scandal of the RM30,000 “leakage” in renovation of a Chinese primary school? It is the astronomical 416,666 times!

It is no use Ong, the other three MCA Ministers, and even Koh Tsu Koon, claiming that English should continue to be used as medium of instruction for maths and science in Forms 4 and 5 from 2012, when they were full parties to the Cabinet decision last Wednesday to turn the Malaysian education system into a crazy 9-2-5/6 system, with students going through nine years of the two subjects taught in English, two years in Bahasa Malaysia in Forms 4 and 5 and then reverting to English for five or six years of pre-university and tertiary education in maths and science.

Other modifications of last week’s PPSMI decision Ministers from UMNO, MCA, Gerakan, MIC, SUPP, PBS and other BN component parties should decide tomorrow include:

• Immediate implementation of the abolition of PPSMI “One Size Fits All” disastrous experiment for all national, Chinese and Tamil primary schools for schools which are ready for such reversion to use of mother-tongue medium of instruction in the two subjects, particularly all the Chinese primary schools in the country; and

• Endorsing the proposal of Parents Action Group for Education (Page) that schools should be given the option to teach science and mathematics in Bahasa Malaysia or English or in one’s mother tongue.

*Lim Kit Siang, DAP Parliamentary leader & MP for Ipoh Timor