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Call on MCA, Gerakan and SUPP Ministers to stop "sleeping" in Cabinet and to wake up and rectify at its meeting tomorrow the fallacy that Chinese primary schools are the cause of racial polarisation as well as to give proper authorization on the term of reference and modus operandi of the second Mahathir education review committee Media Conference Statement (2) by Lim Kit Siang (Penang, Tuesday): The speech by the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi at the inaugural Penang UMNO Education Convention on Saturday is a most disturbing one as it is based on the fallacy that the existence of Chinese primary schools is the cause of racial polarization in the country. Warning that racial polarization will become the order of the day if the various races go their own way, especially in education, Abdullah said this was a frightening possibility that should be addressed in the light of few non-Bumiputera students joining national schools. The premier-to-be in nine months' time said four distinct ethnic groups might emerge, with a fifth division among the Malays in terms of different religious leaning. Stressing that this was unhealthy, he said: "What happened in Yugoslavia should be a lesson to us on what can happen if racial polarisastion gets out of hand." He said that public confidence in national schools must be restored and that Malaysians should embrace national schools as their educational institution of choice. I am surprised that the Penang Chief Minister, Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon, who attended the Abdullah's opening speech for the education convention, did not point out the fallacy of this argument as with his Dong Jiao Zong background before entering politics through Gerakan in 1982, Tsu Koon should realize the fallacy of Abdullah's speech. It is not Malaysian-centred mother-tongue education which is the cause of racial polarization but divisive national policies which continue to segregate Malaysians into bumiputeras and non-bumiputeras instead of treating them as one Malaysian people. There are other fallacies in Abdullah's speech, as implying that Chinese primary schools have become nurseries of Chinese chauvinism, when they have always been Malaysian-centred and Malaysian-oriented schools using the same national syllabus as the national primary schools, and with a multi-racial pupil population, with some 10 per cent of the Chinese primary school enrolment of over 600,000 who are non-Chinese - Malays, Indians, Ibans and Kadazans. Before every general election, Chinese schools are praised by UMNO leaders for their good school results, student discipline and the commitment of the teachers - but which seem to be easily forgotten after each election. A more serious fallacy of Abdullah's speech is to regard the phenomenon of the overwhelming majority of Chinese pupils enrolling in national-type Chinese primary schools as a recent development. The phenomenon of some 90 per cent of Chinese pupils attending Chinese primary schools did not develop only in the past few years or in the past decade, but went back for three decades in the early seventies when there was a sudden education policy change in the shutdown of all English-medium primary schools. In fact by 1977, when Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad was then the Education Minister, 87 per cent of the Chinese students were already attending the Chinese primary schools, as 478,849 out of a total of 550,545 Chinese primary pupils were in Chinese primary schools. These data are to be found in the Mahathir Cabinet Education Review Committee Report which was made public in November 1979, and there was a parliamentary debate on my motion on the Mahathir report in June the next year. This was also the situation when Abdullah was the Education Minister from 1984 to 1986. Did the Chinese primary schools, with the enrolment of some 90 per cent of the Chinese pupils, produce chauvinistic, anti-national and unpatriotic Malaysians? This was never the case, for in the past 30 years, Chinese primary schools had produced Malaysians citizens who had contributed more than their share to the present economic and national development of the country, and Mahathir had said more than once inside and outside the country that he regards as his greatest achievement the peaceful development of the country contributed by all Malaysians, regardless of race or stream of education. In his recent visit to India, for instance, in answer to a question by an Indian journalist on his legacy, Mahathir said he regarded forging closer race relations in Malaysia's plural society as his most important achievement in his 21 years as Prime Minister. It is not right to blame racial polarization on the existence of Chinese primary schools. This is because in the ensuing five-year secondary education, the overwhelming majority of Malaysian students, regardless of race, undergo the same schooling in the national secondary schools . The 60 Chinese Independent Secondary School enroll only some 10 per cent of the Std. VI pupils - which means that some 90 per cent of the Std. VI Chinese primary school students continue their studies in the national secondary schools. The more pertinent question to be asked is why after some 10 to 11 years of schooling under the same roof, comprising five years of secondary education, two-years of pre-university and three or four years of university education, the educational and socialization processes have failed to foster greater national integration among the new generation of Malaysians of diverse races? The MCA, Gerakan and SUPP Ministers should stop "sleeping" in Cabinet and wake up and rectify at its meeting tomorrow the fallacy that Chinese primary schools are the cause of racial polarisation as well as to give proper authorization on the term of reference and modus operandi of the second Mahathir education review committee. It is most shocking that some two months after the UMNO Supreme Council meeting on November 29 to set up the most high-powered education review committee in the nation's history, headed by the Prime Minister, with far-reaching education and nation-building consequences, MCA, Gerakan and SUPP Ministers have not raised the subject in the Cabinet. If the second Mahathir education review committee is to result in a national education system which will overcome its historic shortcomings and weaknesses and be a genuine instrument of national integration of the diverse races in the country, then it must itself be a model of national integration whether in composition, terms of reference or modus operandi - and not just be a committee representing UMNO as is the case at present. If the second Mahathir education review committee is not going to start on a right and proper footing by being fully representative of all political and educational views and opinions and representing the full spectrum of the Malaysian society, then it will only sell itself short - as it would be regarded merely as a narrow and sectional endeavour to advance UMNO political interests and not a truly national effort to reform education to be a genuine instrument of national integration and nation-building. (28/1/2003) * Lim Kit Siang, DAP National Chairman