GEORGE TOWN, Jan 3 — Gerakan President Dominic Lau has called on the prime minister to consider three main criteria when selecting the new education minister.
He said the new education minister must be open-minded with a macro perspective who listens to the people and respects their rights so that unnecessary issues do not arise.
“The new education minister must respect multi-streams of education as Malaysia is a multiracial country with different cultures, races and religions,” he said during a press conference here today.
He also pointed out that the new minister must have a background in education or a genuine education qualification.
“I hope the new minister can solve all the problems in the education system in Malaysia, such as the jawi issue, recognition of the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) and quota system,” he said.
Lau called on the government to review all policies introduced by the Education Ministry.
“Everything should not stop after the resignation of Maszlee Malik. If a policy is unsuitable, it should be stopped and if it is suitable, it should proceed,” he said.
He urged Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to select a new minister soon as the new school year has started, and decisions must be made.
Lau said Maszlee’s resignation has turned into a racial issue with one group welcoming his resignation and another group opposing it.
“We are quite surprised to see that within 16 hours, more than 190,000 people on social media supported Maszlee,” he said.
He said if the Cabinet believed that Maszlee’s resignation could resolve issues plaguing the country’s education system, then the deputy education minister Teo Nie Ching should resign too.
“Both of them did not perform well in the Education Ministry,” he said.
On the jawi issue, Lau said Gerakan has decided to appeal a High Court decision that ruled jawi can be taught as part of the Bahasa Melayu syllabus to students in Chinese and Tamil schools.
“We are not satisfied with the court decision to reject our application for a judicial review and after discussions with our lawyers, we have decided to appeal to show our commitment to defending the rights of Chinese and Tamil primary schools,” he said.
Gerakan filed a suit against the federal government to challenge the latter’s decision to implement the teaching of jawi in vernacular schools but the Penang High Court threw out the suit in last November.
