When MCA stood tall

The party has not always been a wimp, a letter from the archives shows.

COMMENT

According to critics, the development of education in Malaysia has been hamstrung by myopic and discriminatory policies, mediocre policy-makers and weaknesses associated with curriculum planning and delivery.

Hence, when we heard recently from Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin that the education system was undergoing a review, some of us must have seen, in our minds, a ridiculous picture of robotic policy-makers dredging a swamp to rid it of slime and sleaze.

And when he said that the system had not been reviewed since the Razak and Rahman Talib reports were tabled more than 30 years ago, many thought – or hoped – that he had been misquoted.

These days, one of the complaints most often heard about the system is that it encourages racial polarisation. Many younger voters may be surprised to learn that MCA had pointed this out to the government 35 years ago.

Indeed, what we see today as a ghost of a party was once not such a wimp. Nine of its top leaders, including the president, Lee San Choon, wrote a strongly worded letter expressing deep disappointment with a draft report from a committee of cabinet ministers that was in its third year of reviewing the education system.

FMT recently retrieved that letter from the MCA archives. Among other things, it criticised the report as one that was evidently put together by people who were “capable of racist views and racist language”.

The committee was headed by Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was then deputy prime minister as well as education minister. It began its work in 1974 and gave its final recommendations, often referred to as the Mahathir Report, in 1979.

This was opposition leader Lim Kit Siang’s reaction: “The report has failed in its objectives of assessing the successes and failures of the education system in nation-building and meeting the short-term or long-term manpower needs of the nation.”

Lim proposed that Parliament set up a select committee to review the report, but he was ignored.

The MCA letter was dated Jan 31, 1977. It said: “It is clear that members of the secretariat (of the cabinet committee) are totally out of touch with public sentiment on the matters discussed. Worse, it has shown in its draft report that it is capable of racist views and racist language.”

The MCA leaders reminded Mahathir that the late Tun Abdul Razak, during his term as education minister, had publicly pledged that the government would examine the education policy with a view to making it acceptable to all Malaysians and to achieve greater discipline among students.

Their letter said the government “must adopt an education fair to all communities” and “it is our (BN) policy to enable all races to learn and use their mother tongue”. Mahathir’s committee, it added, should concern itself with questions pertaining to the implementation and not the policy itself.

Abolishing mother tongue education

What most infuriated the MCA leaders was the draft report’s call for the abolition of mother tongue education.

“In its observations on primary schools,” the letter said, “the secretariat noted that the present system of primary education serves to polarise the races and does not foster national identity or character.

“It cited Section 21(2) of the Education Act 1961, which empowers the minister of education to convert national-type schools into national schools, and recommended that mother-tongue education in primary schools be abolished.

“What the secretariat has failed to recognise is that the Razak Report nowhere states that Bahasa Malaysia is to be the sole medium of instruction at all levels, but merely the main medium of instruction.”

It expressed regret that the secretariat had cleverly refused to commit itself to stating whether mother-tongue language was a fundamental and integral part of the national education policy. “The omission of comment on such a basic issue can only be construed as deliberate,” the letter said.

“With tongue in cheek, however, it justifies the predominance of Malay students in Institute Technology Mara (ITM) on the grounds that there is a need to train more Malays for commerce and industry.

“In the same breath, the secretariat reveals its racist character and its inability to live up to its responsibility to provide fair and equitable recommendations.”

The MCA leaders advised Mahathir to direct the members of the secretariat to get out of their ivory tower. “Go to the ground and have a fair sampling of the mood of the people, their frustrations over the lack of educational opportunities and their new and easy willingness to resort to actions which merely reflect a sense of helplessness and desperation.”

San Choon and his deputy, Michael Chen, chose to boycott the cabinet committee meeting on Feb 13, 1977.

It was perhaps in the field of education that Barisan Nasional’s ethnically divisive policies most infuriated the non-Bumiputera communities in the 70s and 80s.

Prof Heng Pek Koon, writing in an academic journal in December 1996, said: “Apart from the NEP, the government’s New Educational Policy and National Cultural Policy (sic) also adversely affected Chinese interests. The New Educational Policy made Malay the main language of instruction in state schools and universities after 1970, and restricted Chinese access to university placements and scholarships. The National Cultural Policy, introduced after 1970, aimed at propagating a Malaysian national culture based almost exclusively on Malay and Islamic elements.”

But perhaps it was historian Lee Kam Hing who best summed up MCA’s dilemma in the 80s. He wrote: “Critics of the MCA point out that the fact that the MCA found it necessary to carry out these projects (that is, on education) only underscores the ineffectiveness of the party at the highest reaches of the government and the fact that TAR College and the Multi-Purpose Holdings are piecemeal efforts which do not resolve the fundamental issues which concern the Chinese.”

Stanley Koh is a former head of MCA’s research unit. He is now a FMT columnist.