DAP would like to warn that the MCA’s political struggle will eventually come to an end should the UMNO’s Annual General Assembly passing any resolution to pave way for closing down the Chinese schools in the country.
We will call on all Malaysians, regardless of race and religion, to raise up to end the MCA in the coming General Elections since the MCA is no more a relevant political party following the closure of Chinese schools, as part of its failure to protect the interests of Chinese community at large.
The MCA has since tied its political struggle with the Chinese community as well as the Chinese schools. What else the roles for the MCA to play up if the MCA has failed in its mission to protect the Chinese schools, not mentioning to defend the rights of the Chinese community as a whole?
Even the relevance of maintaining the system of Chinese schools is being put forward as one of the hotly-debated topics through the motions to be tabled in the UMNO’s General Assembly, we have not seen much pre-emptive and pro-active action taken by MCA leadership to ensure that the Chinese schools will continue to exist.
UMNO’s Vice President Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has revealed that from 755 proposals sent by the 191 UMNO divisions in the country, the debate on Chinese schools versus single-stream schools is one of the issues that will dominate the UMNO’s General Assembly this year.
Amongst the MCA’s top leadership, we could only hear some lame responses from MCA’s Deputy President Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong, that UMNO’s General Assembly is free to debate over vernacular schools, but maintained that Chinese education is here to stay.
In fact, the MCA leadership right from its President Dato’ Sri Liow Tiong Lai to every single Central Committee Member and Divisional Leaders as well as grassroot leaders should register their strongest protest over UMNO’s attempts to pass any motion in its General Assembly and paving way for closing the Chinese schools.
The relevance of Chinese schools should not be questioned, as we won’t question the relevance of national schools as well. This is a non-issue for the UMNO’s General Assembly unless the UMNO resorted to continue to Chinese bashing again, an old tactic that UMNO used to divide-and-rule the country as to consolidate its Malays’ support base.
The Chinese schools have been in existence for the last 200 years. The Chinese schools have been institutionalized for the younger generations of Chinese community to learn their own mother-tongue language, and this is a human right explicitly guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
All the claims that Chinese schools promoting disunity in the country are totally baseless. We, the non-Malays, do hereby declare our undivided loyalties to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, our state rulers, accept Malay language as our national language and recognise Islam as the official religion of the country.
If the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, who is also the UMNO’s President, is sincere with his assurance last month that the national-type Chinese primary schools in the country are here to stay and protected under the Federal Constitution and laws in the country, then he must not allow the relevance of Chinese schools to be questioned in the UMNO’s General Assembly and eventually for the critics of vernacular schools to push for the establishment of single-stream schools instead.