Mukhriz urged closure of vernacular schools

Umno youth chief aspirant, Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir had recently urged vernacular schools in the nation to be closed in order to achieve national unity reasoning that the current vernacular school system are too divisive.

Well, we knew that Mukhriz was making this statement in order to gain support for his Umno youth chief candidacy in the coming Umno elections on March next year. With his statement which was deemed to be racist and one-sided had resulted to criticism from both Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional parties. Certain quarters had also called on Mukhriz to apologize, retract his statement or action to be taken against him under Sedition Act.

Mukhriz, you should know who started all these first of all. During the independence era, it was Umno who had started all these divide and rule in order to preserve some sort of special privilege currently enjoyed. If Umno were had to really think of national unity from the beginning, then there would be no such thing of “ketuanan Melayu”, “pendatang” or “penghuni sementara” today.

Let us put it this way, if Mukhriz still insist that the vernacular schools should be closed in order to achieve national unity, then Umno and the rest of the race based parties like MCA, MIC or IPF should be disband first to form a united political party which consist of all ethnics with racial equality as a must. Can Mukhriz or Umno do that, first of all? We don’t think so.

Therefore, Mukhriz should use his common sense first before lashing out such statement. Umno had already split the nation racially 50 years ago and you cannot just call for a so-called national unity by first closing down all the Chinese and Tamil schools in this country.

What about the national-type schools or “sekolah kebangsaan”? Based on our observation, these schools has been too Islamic or overly Malayed, and this is what drove the Chinese and Indian parents away from enrolling their children in these schools.

So, will Mukhriz or Umno be able to neutralize and secularize the “sekolah kebangsaan” schools to make them more attractive to the Chinese and Indian parents and children? We are doubtful they could do it.