Mustapa proven wrong, textbook withdrawn

I had advised Dato Mustapa Mohamed, Higher Education Minsiter, to admit mistake on the controversial ethnic relations textbook used by the Universiti Putra Malaysia yesterday. Earlier, he was adamant to defend that the textbook was a product of academic freedom.

Mustapa was proven wrong when the cabinet did not accept his defence and directed that the textbook be withdrawn yesterday. His deputy, Dato Ong Tee Kiat, as usual, attempted to claim credit with an afterthought statement. MCA President, Dato Seri Ong Ka Ting, also rushed to claim that the MCA cabinet ministers had done their part by raising the matter in the cabinet.

Well, Ong Ka Ting again failed to realize that the matter needs no effort from the MCA to bring it up to the cabinet. It had been condemned by the Ngos in the chinese press for the past few days, and brought up in Parliament by Chong Chieng Jen, DAP MP for Bandar Kuching, by way of an emergency motion when Ong Tee Kiat was still sitting side by side with his superior in the press conference held in the Parliament House and other MCA ministers were still hesitating to use strong words against the textbook.

Minister for Prime Minister Department in charge of Parliament, Dato Nazri, who had openly said that the contents of the textbook were seditious, would have had brought the matter up in cabinet because he was the minister whose duty was to report the proceedings in Parliament to the cabinet. I would rather trust the UMNO minister whose stand was clear in public than the MCA minister was silent and dilly-dally in public but claimed later to have been heroic in the closed door cabinet.

It is interesting to note that Dato Seri Samy Vellu, Works Minister cum MIC President, was also silent on the issue when the Indian youths were blamed for the Taman Medan riot. Was that because such view was actually opined by Dato Dennison, the chairperson of the MIC think-tank, himself in one of his working papers?

When controversy of such nature erupts, true and ugly faces of the politicians surface.