Call on MCA, Gerakan and SUPP Ministers to ask Cabinet on Wednesday to delete the reference to Vision School Concept in the Eighth Malaysia Plan unless there is full consultation and agreement of all  communities

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang 

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It is clear that the Barisan Nasional government has refused to learn from the lessons of the Lunas by-election last November and insists on implementing the  the Vision Schools on a big scale under the Eighth Malaysia Plan in utter disregard of the legitimate concerns of the Chinese community about the preservation of the identity and character of the Chinese primary schools.

The Malaysian Chinese community will fully support all government efforts to promote greater national unity among the diverse races in the country, but this must not be at the expense of preserving the country’s multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious diversity which is in fact Malaysia’s greatest heritage and resource to compete with the rest of the world in  the Information Age.

One MCA  Minister had suggested after the Lunas by-election that the Vision School Concept should be reconsidered by the Barisan Nasional, but this proposal was immediately shot down by the MCA President, Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik.

It is most regrettable that without a new reconsideration of the Vision School Concept and the fullest consultation with all concerned segments of the population, the government has decided to proceed with the full  implementation of  the Vision School Concept under the Eighth Malaysia Plan.

The events of the past five months after the Lunas by-election have only reinforced concerns and anxieties about the actual agenda of the Vision School Concept, such as:
 

• The continued calumny by government leaders that those  who oppose or question the Vision School Concept are “extremists”, “communists”,  “anti-national oven “traitors”;
• The Education Ministry’s scandalous handling of the Damansara Chinese primary school issue and its refusal to re-open the original school;
• The negative response of the Barisan Nasional component parties to the DAP’s proposal for a New Deal for Mother-Tongue Education in the Eighth Malaysia Plan; and
• Not a single word of reference to Chinese primary schools or mother-tongue education in the 658-page Eighth Malaysia Plan.

In fact, the MCA, Gerakan and SUPP Ministers should explain why they had agreed to the proposal to increase the number of Vision Schools under the Eighth Malaysia Plan when they should be fully conscious and sensitive to the widespread and deep-seated public  objections to such a move, as highlighted in  the Lunas by-election.

(23/4/2001)