Convent school gets new head as government seeks to calm Catholic unease

December 20, 2011

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 20 — Putrajaya has appointed a new principal for SMK Convent Bukit Nanas (CBN) here after its Catholic owners complained about the government’s failure to consult them in the appointment of the school’s current principal.

Federal Territory Education director Datuk Khairil Awang confirmed today that a new name has now been proposed for the job, amid growing unease in the Catholic Church that the government was trampling on its rights.

Convent Bukit Nanas in Kuala Lumpur. — Picture courtesy of cbn.edu.my

“I have given the name of the new principal to the ministry,” The Star newspaper’s online edition quoted Khairil as saying.

Khairil said only one candidate had originally been eligible for the job from among names submitted to the ministry, but that person was due to retire.

However, the person, whom he did not name, has now opted to retire only at 60 under a new government scheme, paving the way for the new appointment.

“I have consulted with Archbishop Tan Sri Murphy Packiam and the CBN board to explain the matter. The issue is settled,” he told The Star.

For Catholic Malaysians, Putrajaya’s latest pick of a Malay-Muslim principal to head the prestigious CBN underscored a worrying trend to disregard the church’s contribution and rights in the country.

Kuala Lumpur Archbishop Pakiam waded this week into a growing row between the 112-year-old school’s Catholic owners and the Ministry of Education (MOE) after its new principal Datin Seri Zavirah Mohd Shaari’s surprise arrival at its doorstep.

“The appointment of the principal of CBN is not only contrary to the government policy of maximum consultation but has given the impression that it is the government’s strategy to take over the mission schools in total disregard for the status, ethos and special character of mission schools, especially CBN,” Pakiam said in a statement published last week in Catholic paper The Herald.

He was appealing to Education director-general Datuk Seri Abdul Ghafar Mahmud to reconsider the ministry’s decision and pick a suitably qualified person nominated by the school owners under the Infant Jesus (IJ) Sisters order. The school is considered among the top convent schools in the country.

The case comes on the heels of a recent drama over the police’s extra conditions for carolling permits on two South Klang churches less than two weeks ago.

Earlier this year, right-wing Malay-Muslim groups triggered a national uproar over persistent rumours that churches are on a campaign to convert their own and pushing unfounded allegations of a secret political plot to install a Christian prime minister in the next general election.

Christians say such issues are an attempt to erode their religious rights in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

CBN, which has produced notable personalities such as Bersih 2.0 chief Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan and former International Trade Minister Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz, is one of 60 convent schools in Malaysia, Sister Rosalind Tan had told The Malaysian Insider.

Tan is the mother provincial of the IJ Sisters and the person in charge of the order’s administration in the country.

She said last week that the school’s board of governors was taken aback when Zavirah reported for duty last week because there was no prior notice from the Education Ministry.

The previous head, Ann Khoo, retired last month.

Tan said this was not the first time the ministry had acted without consultation, saying the issue had been going on for decades.

She said the order, as the school’s rightful owners, had a responsibility to ensure the school head abided by its founding ethos even though the operations were now managed by the federal government.

“We have no qualms about race or religion of the principal posted to our mission schools,” she said.

She had said that Zavirah was not school’s first lay principal or the order’s first non-Christian school head, but expressed disappointment that its nominees had been sidelined by the ministry.

In his statement, Pakiam highlighted that Zavirah had not been on a list submitted by the mission school authority.

He said the decision breached a previous government policy in the 1970s for “maximum consultation” with Christian mission schools nationwide in a revised report by the Royal Commission on the Teaching Services, West Malaysia.

The metropolitan archbishop added that former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was the education minister in 1976, had repeated and affirmed the pledge in 1998 in a trip to Kota Kinabalu, to consult mission school authorities over the choice of school heads and teachers.

There are over 400 Christian mission schools nationwide.

Catholics, who make up nearly one million of the country’s 28 million total population, have founded more than 250 such schools, including Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s alma mater, St John’s Institution, which neighbours CBN.