Vernacular Sedition?

According to a MalaysiaKini article today, Lim Kit Siang claims that, “Umno Youth chief aspirant Mukhriz Mahathir had committed sedition in calling for the closure of Chinese and Tamil primary schools. He pointed out the Constitution Amendment 1971 had imposed absolute prohibition on Malaysians from questioning the four issues, which includes anyone who propose the closure of vernacular schools.”

Does this mean that my previous blog entry might be seditious as well? As I am not a lawyer, I wouldn’t know for sure. So, looking at the Sedition Act 1948, it mentions in 3(1)(f) that:

“A seditious tendency is a tendency to to question any matter, right, status, position, privilege, sovereignty or prerogative established or protected by the provisions of Part III of the Federal Constitution or Article 152, 153 or 181 of the Federal Constitution.”

As we all know, Article 153 deals with the special rights and privileges of the Malays and Bumiputra while Article 181 deals with the royalty. However, Article 152 does deal with the issue of languages. So, let’s see what it actually says:

The national language shall be the Malay language and shall be in such script as Parliament may by law provide: Provided that-
(a) no person shall be prohibited or prevented from using (otherwise than for official purposes), or from teaching or learning, any other language; and
(b) nothing in this Clause shall prejudice the right of the Federal Government or of any State Government to preserve and sustain the use and study of the language of any other community in the Federation.

While Mukhriz had called for the closure of vernacular schools, he has not called for an end to the study of any of the vernacular languages. Quoting the M’kini article, “We can make it compulsory that the Chinese and Indians study their own language in their mother tongue while these two languages can be optional for Malay students to learn or we can make it compulsory for students to learn at least three languages.”

Obviously, our respected Lim Kit Siang and all the other politicians who are rising up to the defense of vernacular schools, have been misinformed. They are also in the business of spin and trying to play this issue up for their own political mileage. What Mukhriz is calling for is in fact an reinforcement of Article 152 of the constitution, a fairer and more sustainable way of doing things.

If there is anyone who is acting seditious, it is the Dong Jiao Zhong who have fought previous attempts at introducing vernacular languages in national schools. So, if Mukhriz gets elected in as UMNO Youth Chief and then gets appointed as the Minister of Education, I will support any attempts that he makes at phasing out the vernacular schools.

However, he must put his money where is mouth is and introduce a third-language into our schools. We already have the option of taking Arabic, French, Mandarin, Tamil in SPM. So, please introduce all these languages in schools and allow anyone to take any languages that they wish. It will make all our kids trilingual and that can only be a good thing, particularly for national unity.

I stand by my previous statement that vernacular schools need to be “burned down” (not literally of course!). However, we should also open up all our national schools to everyone, meaning that there should not be any measly quota restrictions anywhere. Let’s all play fair now!