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The Sad Failure Of 128 Top  STPM Students Who Were Rejected From Doing Medicine Despite Getting 5As Will Not Be Repeated By Building More Medical And Professional Colleges That Accommodate Our Best And Brightest As Well As Quota Students Speech - At The DAP Sempurong Parliamentary Liason Committee Dinner by Lim Guan Eng (Paloh, Saturday): The sad failure of 128 STPM students who were rejected from doing medicine despite getting 5As will not be repeated by building more medical and professional colleges that accommodate our country’s best and brightest as well as our quota students. The Chinese have a famous phrase that “we should not let our children suffer neither should we allow their education to be poorer”.   The problem is that BN’s educational policies have the strange and negative effect of undermining the strenuous efforts of students who achieved excellent results by causing them suffering. Until today MCA and Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Fu Ah Kiow has still not explained why BN’s educational policies continue to sacrifice our best and brightest.  One of our branch leaders,  Sdr Ricky Liew, is justifiably pround of his brilliant and talented daughter. But she is one sad example of how a top student with 5 As was rejected to do medicine in local universities and offered a fisheries course in Terengganu instead. Is doing a course in fisheries more important to the country than training a doctor? Even though Ricky was then an active MCA branch leader, his daughter became another sacrificial victim of the BN educational policy. Through DAP Seputih MP Teresa Kok and his own efforts in getting public contributions, he managed to send his daughter to study medicine in Shanghai, the top medical school in China.  Realising that MCA was an impotent party that do not have the interests of Malaysians at heart, he left MCA to join DAP with the determination to fight for justice not only for his daughter but for all Malaysians. Let us salute Ricky Liew’s determination and express our hope that more Malaysians can wake up and emulate Ricky Liew to leave MCA and join DAP’s struggle for justice and equal opportunity for all.  BN’s assurances that the educational system has abandoned the quota system in favour of meritocracy is a lie when 128 top students who obtained the full 5 As in the STPM results failed to qualify for medicine. The government’s callous response that the 128 top students who obtained 5 As were just not good enough is unacceptable. Any student can tell you that it is not easy to score 5As in STPM. If it is so easy, let me ask how many of the present BN Ministers from MCA, UMNO and MIC obtained 5As in the STPM?    At a time when the country is spending RM 40 million yearly to employ 700 foreign doctors, the refusal to allow the country’s best and brightest to study medicine is incomprehensible, illogical and irresponsible. Apart from saving RM 40 million in foreign exchange, such discriminatory policies have caused a serious brain drain.   The government’s ambitious “brain gain” policy announced by then Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamed to attract 5,000 talents annually failed spectacularly.  Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, Datuk Dr Jamaluddin Jarjis in Parliament  said in Parliament on 20 September 2004 that between 1995 and 2000, the “brain gain” scheme attracted 94 scientists, including 24 Malaysians in the fields of pharmacology, medicine, semi-conductor technology and engineering, there is only one left. Even the 23 Malaysians who returned have given up on the discriminatory policies that sacrifices meritocracy and reward mediocrity.   We do not have to look very far at how serious this problem of “brain drain” has become. Look at Singapore hospitals, more than half of the doctors there are Malaysians. There are even stories of how Malaysian Ministers visiting Singapore are so impressed with Singapore professionals in IT that they asked them to come and perform in Malaysia. Imagine our Ministers’ embarrassment when told by these professionals that they are actually from Malaysia! Singapore must be delighted that Malaysia can be so generous as to spend so much money to readily send our best and brightest to them.   Higher Education Minister Dr Shafie Salleh's extremist remarks in the UMNO General Assembly that as the Higher Education Minister, he will never allow non-Bumiputera students to enter UiTM and  that the number of Bumiputera students in public universities will always exceed the given quota. For example, he said in 2002, there were 69 % Bumiputera students, while the quota was only 63%, while in 2004, there were 64 %  Bumiputeras (the quota was only 53%). Clearly quota policies for university entrance continue to sacrifice our best and brightest despite the government’s claims of adopting meritocracy.    Clearly BN is going ahead with its policy of quotas cloaked with meritocracy. DAP proposes that the government adopt a “win-win” solution by building more professional and medical colleges to accommodate both quota students and our top students. Building more top professional colleges will allow BN to pursue its quotas or “meritocracy cloaked with quotas policies” without sacrificing our best and brightest. BN should exercise prudent and responsible management because Malaysia can not afford to lose more of our talented young people if we hope to remain competitive in world market economy.  Education is not just a window of opportunity for the poor and disadvantaged to raise themselves up to a higher standard of living but also an engine of growth to make the country more technologically advanced and prosperous. By not allowing educational democracy and equal opportunity, BN has not only caused suffering and anguish to our top students but also done Malaysia a great disservice by depriving ourselves of their immense contributions. (15/1/2005) * Lim Guan Eng, DAP Secretary-General