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Cabinet on Wednesday should clarify whether for the first time in 48 years of nationhood, the issue of more Chinese primary schools to meet increasing student enrolment needs has become a new “sensitive issue” banned from public discussion and consultation Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang (Ipoh, Monday): The Cabinet on Wednesday should clarify whether for the first time in 48 years of nationhood since Merdeka in 1957, the issue of more Chinese primary schools to meet increasing student enrolment needs has become a new “sensitive issue” banned from public discussion and consultation. The announcement by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi early this month about the end of the “political honeymoon” seems to have become the signal for some Barisan Nasional Ministers and leaders to violate instead of to fulfill and deliver general election pledges.
In the March general election last year, full-page advertisements were taken out in the Chinese newspapers exhorting the electorate to vote for Pak Lah and the Barisan Nasional to defend the rights of the people, including giving “fair treatment for mother-tongue education”.
One year after the 2004 general election, which gave the Barisan Nasional the unprecedented 92 per cent parliamentary majority resulting in the weakest opposition in parliamentary electoral history, Malaysians are told for the first time in 48 years of nationhood by Barisan Nasional leaders that the issue of more Chinese primary schools under the Ninth Malaysia Plan to meet increasing student enrolment needs cannot be canvassed or discussed publicly, and that it can only be addressed behind closed doors as it is a sensitive, polarizing and divisive issue.
Why should the issue of “fair treatment for mother-tongue education”, including more Chinese primary schools to meet increasing student enrolment needs, suddenly become a sensitive, polarizing and divisive issue which cannot be discussed publicly but must be pushed “behind closed-doors”, when for 48 years since Merdeka, it was respected by all Malaysians as a legitimate issue for public discussion and advocacy whether in conferences, public meetings, mass media, Parliament, State Assemblies - even by those who disagree with the issue?
Is Malaysia becoming more resilient and mature as a democratic and united multi-racial nation after nearly five decades of nationhood or the reverse?
The Prime Minister had given an assurance in January that the Ninth Malaysia Plan will be a fully consultative process which will include the views of Malaysians from all walks of life. Has this assurance now been qualified by the condition that there are certain new issues and areas which in the past half-century of nationhood had been regarded as legitimate public questions for discussion and advocacy but which are now “banned” and driven “underground”, like the issue of more Chinese primary schools to meet increasing student enrolment under the Ninth Malaysia Plan? |