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Only one Indian student was qualified for the Universiti Malaya Medical Faculty is a glaring weakness of the so-called merit system without merits   Media Statement by Ronnie Liu Tian Khiew (Petaling Jaya, Friday): MIC president Datuk Samy Vellu was talking about increasing the intake of Indian students for Universiti Malaya to at least another 50%. That would add up to another 8 from the existing 16, which is 10% of the total 160 intakes per year. The next thing we heard, there was only one miserable Indian student qualified for the UM Medical Faculty this year! The deputy minister of education who broke the news actually attributed this shocking result to the new merit system. He has indirectly saying that the Indian students in the past did not earn a place in the medical faculty, but were rather "given" a place under the quota system. We have yet to know what will be the reaction from the MIC chief, but we certainly would not believe that our Indian boys and girls were actually not qualified as claimed by the deputy minister of education, Datuk Aziz Shamsuddin. These students must be the victims of the so-called merit system, which compares an orange with an apple. In fact, we have learned from a very reliable source that there were at least six Indians students applied for the UM Medical Faculty but were turned away. Five out of the six were given a place in other universities after their appeal, and the remaining one was unable to admit to any medical faculty in the country. We want Tan Sri Musa Mohammad, our Education Minister to tell us, how many Indian students have actually applied for a place in UM Medical Faculty this year, and what sort of grades obtained by these individual student. We were also shocked to learn that many students with lower grades were admitted to the UM Medical Faculty through the backdoor, and Musa Mohammad has claimed that he was unaware of such practice. Something has to be done immediately by the Malaysian Cabinet, to rectify the so-called merit system that allows two totally different sets of rules for university admission. We cannot afford to allow our young and talented boys and girls to be victimised by such a system without a proper recourse. (11/7/2003) * Ronnie Liu Tian Khiew, DAP national publicity secretary