MARCH 9 – The Malaysian Insider.
Take a policy. Put it to work. At the first sign of trouble or protest, pull it back and return to the drawing board. Seems familiar? That seems to be the mantra of late in Malaysia.
The latest is the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English, which finally saw a street protest in front of the National Palace repulsed only by the effective water cannons of the efficient Federal Reserve Unit (FRU).
The roiling debate about teaching of the two subjects in English has been there since it was first conceived and implemented more than six years ago. Then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, being the doctor he is, went ahead without care of the symptomatic rejection by nationalists and lovers of the Malay language.
That was back in the day.
Today, leaders wilt at the first sign of protest. The simmering protest against the English language switch came to a boil last Saturday, timed perfectly for Umno’s party elections and assembly later this month.
One can almost imagine the English dilemma now for Education Minister and Umno vice–president aspirant Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hussein, as opposed to the Malay dilemma posed by Mahathir decades ago.
He has blamed it on opposition parties exploiting an issue but even within his party and government circles, many are against the language switch and he will have tread carefully and respectfully or else lose it at the Umno polls.
Yet, despite the various discussions and the general agreement that students have gained rather than suffered from the language switch, the decision to scrap using English to teach both subjects lies in the hands of the prime minister, be it Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi or his successor, Datuk Najib Tun Razak.
Both, however, have shown a low threshold to pain, flip–flopping at the first sign of protest to some of the initiatives announced through the years.
One need look no further than the much-debated and much-hailed Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) that is now a watered-down Enforcement Agencies Integrity Commission (SIAP), the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), the Malaysian Anti–Corruption Commission (MACC) and proposals from government-linked-corporation Sime Darby to take over the Institut Jantung Negara (IJN) and develop its land for a low-cost carrier airport in Labu.
The commissions have become more of omissions now. The Sime Darby proposals were dumped after a huge public outcry, blamed on poor public relations rather than the poor defence of collective decisions by the Cabinet.
In fact, switching the medium of instruction from Bahasa Malaysia to English was a Cabinet decision made in 2002 to address the poor command of the world’s lingua franca and most of those in that Cabinet are still in government today.
Is their threshold to pain so low that they will wilt and surrender on the English issue, further subjecting Malaysian students to the whims and fancies of politicians unable to defend their principles in their defence of power and position?
Put it another way: does two plus two equal four?
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