1. During the tenureship of Tun Mahathir as our Prime Minister, he stressed the freedom of expression as a tenet of democratic Malaysia. As a nation striving to be a developed one by the year 2020, the citizens must be assured democratic values.
2. Yet there were "ghosts" which and who monitored the opinion expresses by citizens which were construed as anti-government or opposed to the preferred opinions of the government leaders. I found this very disturbing. I quote you some examples that I knew.
a) A professor of mathematics who expressed his opinion that the statistics published by the Ministry of Education on the proficiency of English among the primary students who studied Science & Mathematics was flawed was threatened. In fact he was threatened with demotion and his contract terminated.
b) An associate professor of agreed with the reformation as proposed by Dato Sri Anuwar Ibrahim was asked to reprt to Kajang police station for questoning.
c) A student leader who was accused of distributing pro-opposition pamphlets was suspended for a semester of her studies and an intelligent tutor was denied to pursue his PhD overseas as he was failed by TataNegara facilitators for speaking his mind.
d) Twelve lecturers were called by the university authority who were accused as anti-UMNO and some of them happenned to be hardcore pro-government slaves.
3. When the then Minister of Education asked the universities to look at the possibility of reducing the 4-year to 3-year curriculum for the first degree in order to increase the skilled labour for the industrialising Malaysia, the Vice Chancellors, without much surveys and studied implemented that. Now we are consuming that fruits of ill-conceived fertilised ovules. Intellectually the students were ill-prepared for industries.
4. When some of our diplomats could not expressed their opinions well in English and when some government leaders believed that science and technology are important for Malaysia, English is believed to be the medium of communication. However, I believed that to show that 2 + 2 = 4 does not require English; to show E = MC2 does not require English, to show the chemical formula of thiocarbamate also does not require English and to teach the Theory of Evolution does not require English. However, English is required as a strong second language for all Malaysian, just like the Germans, Danish, Dutch, Brazilians, Tunisians, etc.
5. Why are peaceful demonstrations not allowed in a democratic Malaysia? Some people said it was not our culture to demonstrate, our culture taught us to be silent and obedient. Some people said we were apeing our Thai and Indonesian cousins, and they are not good for tourism and foreign investments. Some people said we were making the police force to work over-time and its is costing money on the part of the government. Some peaceful demonstrations were purposely disrupted by to prove their points that these were the works of "extremists" (see Che Det's blog)
6. I just want to see Malaysia and Malaysians follow the democratic principles and tenets so that when we attain Vision 2020 in some 10 years time we will be a Nation of First World Mentality
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
touchy touchy...This is a good medium to express whatever opinions we have about anything. Somehow, people tend to misinterpret what we write because people see things differently when they are written down. Have you heard, the majority percentage of good communication skills come from body language, and not so much verbal. So, there. One fact for us all to hover around.
Dear Nad
Thanks for your honest comment. In the past I refrained myself from speaking on touchy items cos as you said various people may interprete differently. After all in a democratic and free country people are free to express what they feel. Somehow, these touchy things have been in my system for too long, I thought of letting them go one by one .....more suprises to come!
Post a Comment