"Hishamuddin Vs Ong Tee Keat: Chinese Education in Crisis"

I read in Wednesday Sin Chew Jit Poh that there will be a DAP forum – “Chinese Education in crisis” held. The moment I read about this news, I decided to attend. The funny thing about this report in the papers is that no information about this forum is given. There’s a photo of Lim Guan Eng(DAP Secretary General), Teresa Kok(Seputeh MP) and Tan Kok Wai(Cheras MP) in a press conference and a brief description on the photo - Lim Guan Eng call on the public to attend this forum. But how to attend? Where is this forum held? When is this forum? No details is given.

I knew that this is something to do about press freedom; somebody is trying to stop the news from spreading. So I went online and check how to attend this forum. I got the information from DAP’s website. The forum will be on a Thursday evening 28 September 2006 7.30pm in the KL and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. I haven’t been to this place and I do not know the way there, luckily there’s a map to be downloaded from the site.

Just now, at around 6pm I phone the KL and Selangor Assembly Hall and asked them the exact location and whether parking space is available. The person over the phone told me that there will be parking space but I would have to arrive early as it might be full. She also told me that just after I passed by the Maharaja Monorail I have to take a left turn at the first junction. The junction is before the water fountain. After listening to her words, I have a 99% of confidence reaching there. Before that I just agak-agak knew the place from the map.

I started my journey together with my housemate from Sungai Long at about 6.30pm. Most of the people are coming back from work while I’m going to town so the traffic is quite smooth. I reached there at about 7pm. I guess that’s quite early as I got a parking space and a good seat inside the auditorium.

There’s a DAP Counter outside the auditorium, I fill up the survey form and bought 2 copies of “The Rocket”(newsletter by DAP), one English Version and another Chinese Version. I went into the auditorium and sit at the center of the first row(That’s the best seat – just in front of uncle kit). I was flipping through the pamphlets I got from the counter while thinking whether to subscribe to the English Version or the Chinese Version of “The Rocket” and finally I decided to subscribe to the Chinese Version for some reasons. First, I can read English articles from Kit’s Blog. Second, I had been subscribing to Aliran and my dad had been complaining that the English wordings are too small for him to read(He is long sighted). If I subscribe to the Chinese version, he too could get to read the “real” news.



So that’s it, I went out the hall and wanted to fill up the subscription form. I saw Uncle Kit out there. I was kinda excited and I introduce myself. I didn’t expect him to remember me as it had been a long long time since I left comments on his blog. To my surprise, he remember who am I and he introduce me to Guan Eng. He even told Guan Eng, this is Jia Hao’s coursemate. Super good memory by him, he even remembered that I’m Jia Hao’s coursemate. This is only the third time I met Uncle Kit in person and the second time I introduce myself. The first time I met him in Teluk Intan on a DAP function. The second time I met Uncle Kit is in Parliament together with Jia Hao regarding the Article 121 (1) (A) issue.



The forum started late at 8pm as one of the speakers came late. There are altogether 5 speakers :
Lim Guan Eng(DAP Secretary General)
Dato’ Bong Hon Liong(President of KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall)
Uncle Kit(nonit description lar~ so famous ady)
Mr. Chew She Yong(Vice President of the federation of Chinese Association Malaysia)
YB Chong Eng(MP for Bukit Mertajam)

Lim Guan Eng started his speech by giving everyone a big surprise! The two new Chinese Primary School announced by Hishammudin is actually a hoax. One of the school is actually an old school in Johor, just that they relocate the school. Another school in Putrajaya is actually “sekolah wawasan” not a Chinese Primary School. Listen carefully, this means that there is actually no new Chinese Primary School being built. It was a real shock to me as I thought that at last there’s some hope in the Chinese Education. Guan Eng tried to link up the Chinese Education to the NEP. He said that NEP is like sweet to Malays. Too much of it will bring diabetics. On the other hand, MCA’s policy on the Chinese Education is a beggar policy where we get only bread scrap. We must deny both of this “unhealthy” policy. According to “Dong Jiao Zhong” survey, we need at least 138 Chinese Primary Schools but now that only 2(actually only 1) primary schools are built and the Chinese Community is thankful to Hishammudin. Isn’t this funny? Guan Eng also mentioned that while the numbers of Chinese Primary School Students are increasing, the number of Chinese Primary Schools is decreasing.

YB Chong Eng was the second one to talk. She makes use of some newspaper cutting presented using Power point to back her speech. She said that the figure of schools built and relocated given by MCA leaders are contradicting. They gave one figure on this date and another figure on a later date. It’s very funny while looking at the newspaper cuttings. She showed us a newspaper cutting – the first one, Ong Ka Ting saying that a school will be relocated by end of this year(2003) the second newspaper cutting is on 2005, saying that the school is yet to be relocated. She also said that MCA leaders always exaggerate the numbers of schools relocated. For example they consider SJK(C) Damansara as one of the relocated school. What the hell, they close down a normal school and yet still dare to put this into the statistics with pride. Chong Eng said that MCA’s face is very thick. Very true indeed, they do not know how to spell the word “shame”.

Dato’ Bong Hon Liong is the next to deliver his speech followed by Mr. Chew She Yong. Both of them uses word very carefully as they dare not go head to head directly with MCA. I understand their stand as they will need to rely on the governing party on some issues. Mr. Chew puts it nicely “There are some words that we can’t say; as long as you understand what I mean that’s more than enough. We could only “touch and go”



Uncle Kit was the last one to speak. He started off by saying that reading the headline of newspaper today, everyone will have the feeling of relief(the dark clouds are cleared) as Hishammudin announced that two new schools are built. For the past whole week, everyone feel miserable as Nor Omar announced that no Chinese Primary School will be built in 9th MP. Someone even asked, who should we be thankful of? Hishammudin? Lee Kuan Yew? Or Nor Omar? Uncle Kit said maybe we should thanks M. Kula(MP for Ipoh Barat) for forcing Nor Omar to confess the government’s education policy in parliament. Uncle Kit read out the parliament records on Nor Omar’s reply to M. Kula that there will be no Chinese Primary School built under 9th MP.

Di dalam Rancangan Malaysia yang Ke-sembilan ini memang tidak ada. Kita dalam perancangan kita hanya memberikan peruntukan-peruntukan untuk sekolah SJKT dan juga SJKC tidak ada kita perancangan untuk membuat bangunan-bangunan baru.

Sebab itu kita kata dasar kita ialah untuk memperkasa sekolah kebangsaan. Kita mula memperkasakan sekolah kebangsaan kita tukar sebab kita perkenalkan mata pelajaran Tamil, mata pelajaran Cina di sekolah-sekolah kebangsaan ini

When Nor Omar made that reply, MCA’s MP, Gerakan’s MP and MIC’s MP dare not stand up and rebut his claim. Uncle kit also read out the letter from Department of Prime Minister to the newspaper editor to clampdown the media from playing up corruption and abuses of funds in school repair allocations. Uncle Kit showed some sense of humour when he gave some witty speeches. He said that Samy Vellu can’t go to all hundred over schools and climb up to the ceiling to check on the repair work. If he accidentally fall down then what is going to happen? There will be a by-election!



I’ve recorded uncle kit speech using my mobile phone. I will do some editing and post it on my blog soon. The whole clip is around half an hour but youtube would only allow video clips not more than 10 minutes. So I will cut out some interesting part of the speech to upload. There’s a Q&A session after forum. I stand up and gave my view but it was a poor one as I was not prepared. I confess that I have stage fright. Really need to overcome this problem as my oral presentation for my final year project is coming soon. I took a photo with uncle kit before leaving.



The forum ended at 11pm. When I reached home, it’s almost 12am. This forum definitely benefits me a lot, I am exposed to lots of first hand cum uncensored information which I would never get to read from the newspaper. I am already looking forward to attending more forums and parliamentary roundtable in the future.

p/s : here's the report on this forum in Merdeka Review