Nazri thumbs his nose at MCA, scholarships had blessings of PM, DPM

Minister in Prime Minister's Department Nazri Aziz has revealed that the recent controversial scholarship awards - allegedly the most racially skewed ever - were approved with the knowledge of Prime Minister Najib Razak and his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin.

Not surprisingly then, Nazri continued to attack without mercy the MCA, in particular deputy Education minister Wee Ka Siong, who had blamed the mess on the Public Service Department.

“We have to be fair to the officers. When you are a politician and you attack a civil servant, they cannot defend themselves. I am doing this on behalf of all the excellent officers that we have,” Nazri told reporters on Tuesday.

He also said that Najib and Muhyiddin were briefed on the PSD selections on May 5, before the awards were announced on May 13.

The outspoken Umno leader had over the weekend slammed Ka Siong and the MCA for trying to be heoes at the expense of the BN coalition to which they all belonged.

It sparked a tirade from the MCA, with leaders rushing to hit back at Nazri and grabbed a piece of the political limelight.

"I am aghast at recent remarks made by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Aziz’s against MCA on the award of Public Service Scholarship scholarships. As a member of the ruling coalition, Nazri’s comments reek of bad faith and once again prove that he is still living in the outmoded thinking of superiority," deputy publicity chairman Loh Seng Kok had said in a statement.

All talk, no action

Malaysian society has become polarized along racial lines due to decades of communal, or to be precise pro-Malay, policies practised by the Umno-led BN government.

The divide-and-rule policy has worsened in recent times as more opposition parties joined the scene, and instead of opting for greater multiracialism Umno had chosen to harden its racist stance.

Some 60 per cent of the 28 million poplulation are Malays. The Chinese form less than 30 per cent, the Indians less than 10 and the other races make up the balance.

At last week's release of the annual scholarships list, Wee slammed the PSD for discriminating against non-Malay top scorers because of their race even though these students had qualified for the grants based on results.

Wee had also revealed that 363 straight A+ students failed to secure the scholarships this year although Prime Minister Najib Razak had agreed that all students scoring 8A+ and above will receive PSD scholarships after a similar brouhaha last year.

But regardless of whether Wee was trying to be a "hero" or not, pundits say the core issue was not about speaking up anymore but that the MCA and its leaders had reached a stage where they could no longer play their role of being the Chinese community's representatives.

"In the end it is the nation that suffers. The brain drain will get worse. Wee and MCA can talk but how do they get past Nazri and Umno? If they can't, then what is the use of being in the Cabinet or the government or part of the BN? Ultimately, Wee and MCA are just for show," Gopeng MP Lee Boon Chye told Malaysia Chronicle.

"On the Umno side, the way they hammer down Wee shows how little value they attach to the MCA and indirectly the Chinese community. For Umno leaders, the most important thing is the Malay vote and they will never dare to chastise the civil service even if there may be wrongdoing like the MACC and the Teoh Beng Hock case because that is their voter base and they will protect it at all costs, including sacrificing the nation's future."

Debunking Wee, but caught by Kula

Nazri, who is the de-facto Law minister and seldom involved in Education ministry matters, also tried to debunk Wee's statements.

According to Nazri, all SPM students who scored straight 8A+ and above were guaranteed a place in either local or foreign institutions.

He added that the scholarships offered were centered on courses considered critical to Malaysia’s civil service like medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, engineering, science and technology, and social sciences.

“We have two major categories for the scholarship awards. One is the PILN (overseas degree programme) for 1,500 students and another is the PIDN (local degree programme) for 2,500 students, both amounting to 4,000. We also offer 8,000 spots in local universities for other qualified students who will get scholarships for matriculation or diploma courses," said Nazri.

He revealed that of the 4,000 PILN and PIDN scholarships awarded to the 2010 batch of SPM top scorers, 2,183 spots, or 55 per cent, were snapped up by Bumiputera students and 1,817, or 45 per cent, were offered to the non-Bumiputeras.

A total of 16,900 students (7,277, or 43.1 per cent, Bumiputeras and 9,623, or 56.9 per cent, non-Bumiputeras) had applied for PILN scholarships, he said, but only 8,857 made the cut with the minimum academic requirement of straight 9As and above.

Nazri also explained that out of the 1,500 scholarships offered for PILN, 300 were given out solely based on merit to the highest scoring students. “If I’m not mistaken, 363 students qualified for the merit scholarship interviews but we could only give out 300 in the end,” he said.

But though Nazri gave a chunk of figures and statistics, he failed to convince many educationists or pundits. They cut through his swathe of numbers with questions that they challenged him to answer if he was really being transparent.

"The first question that DAP wants PSD to answer is how were the 300 recipients selected from 360 who qualified when the only criterion used was academic result? All 360 students have scored straight A+, so how did JPA decide?" MP for Ipoh Barat M Kulasegaran said in a statement.

"How much weightage is given to interview, even to the extent that who have scored all A+ could lose out when competing for the remaining 1200 places? Second question is why can’t the Cabinet increase an additional 60 scholarships so that those straight A+ students will not have to compete for the remaining 1200 places?"

Time for genuine transparency

Meanwhile, Nazri also explained that since only 1,500 PILN scholarships were offered to the 8,857 qualified applicants, the remaining 7,357 who failed to make the cut were still allowed to apply within the PIDN category.

As there were only 2,500 spots offered under PIDN, he added, the remaining 4,857 students who failed their interviews would still be eligible for the 8,000 scholarships offered to other qualified students who would be offered matriculation or diploma courses at local institutions.

According to Nazri, the government was spending a total of RM1.44 billion for the 4,000 scholarships offered under PILN and PIDN or RM1.08 billion for PILN and RM0.36 billion for PIDN.

Again, he and BN were slammed for not seeking long-term and sustainable solutions.

"Public complaints of unfairness against PSD have become an annual phenomenon. It is unsatisfactory for the government to merely cite keen competition for limited places or performance in interviews as reasons why qualified students are unsuccessful in obtaining PSD scholarships," said Kula.

"It is time that the PSD must be transparent in the award of scholarships. It should, firstly, publish how scores are awarded for all the factors, viz academic result, co curriculum activates, interview performance and economic background. Secondly, it should publish the names of all successful scholarship recipients, with details like results and scores obtained by them, type and place of academic programmes approved by PSD to them."

- Malaysia Chronicle