Early this month, the MCA Deputy Education Minister, Datuk Dr. Fong Chan Onn, had publicly said that there should be no problem as far as the approval of the New Era College is concerned, following the amendments to the application as proposed by the MCA to overcome “technical” problems.
However, later in the same month, the Deputy Education Minister, Datuk Khalid Yunus, announced in Parliament that the New Era College proposal cannot be approved for not fulfilling a vital condition, namely 30 per cent bumiputra equity participation for any new private higher education institution to be established in the country.
This condition revealed by Khalid Yunus in Parliament on Wednesday is clearly not a “technical” problem but a substantive policy question. The question that immediately comes to mind is whether Dr. Fong Chan Onn had been fully in the know about the requirement about 30 per cent bumiputra equity participation when he declared at the beginning of this month that there should be no problem in the approval for the establishment of the New Era College.
The bigger question is how the Education Ministry can use a requirement which has no legal basis, either in the Private Higher Education Institutions Act or any regulation under the Act, to refuse to approve the establishment of New Era College and why the MCA Ministers and Deputy Ministers had allowed such an injustice to be committed.
I have checked the Private Higher Education Institutions Act, and it is silent about this requirement. Furthermore, no regulations have yet been enacted under this Act.
There had been talk that the Ministry of Education official who had been responsible for processing the New Era College application n had recently retired and the concern whether the change of official might affect the application for New Era College.
There is no reason why the change of a official should affect the outcome of any application - as the official is only enforcing the law of the land or the directive of his political masters.
In this case, although the officer in charge of registration of private higher education institutions has been changed, the fact remains that Dr. Fong Chan Onn remains Deputy Education Minister, who is superior to the government official.
The issue at stake is not which official is in charge, but what is the policy of the government, and the stand of the various Barisan Nasional component parties forming the Cabinet, on an institution like the proposed New Era College.
(29/11/96)