A nation divided
When language becomes a weapon of racial politics
Teras president Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid, who also spoke, called for the abolition of "that faction" — meaning Umno — and said the planned gathering would be a way to show up "leaders who were race traitors".
By Shanon Shah and Zedeck Siew, The Nut Graph
PERHAPS the easiest observation one could make about the Gerakan Mansuhkan PPSMI (GMP) gathering on 7 March 2009 is that it was mono-cultural.
While there were representatives from Chinese-language education proponents in the thousands-strong crowd, these numbered in the mere double-digits. Tamil educationists were absent altogether. The crowd was overwhelmingly ethnic Malay Malaysian, sporting banners saying: "Bangsa Melayu, Bahasa Malaysia".
Many were young men, sporting kopiahs. As often as not, their chants were Islamic refrains. And when the riot police started firing tear gas at the marchers, the expletive of choice was "laknat!" — a curse with religious connotations.
The way discourse within the anti-ETeMS (English for Teaching Mathematics and Science policy) movement is being perverted is best symbolised by the words of the poet and columnist Che Shamsuddin Othman, better known as Dinsman. On 24 Feb 2009, in a speech at a forum on the issue, Dinsman said if the policy to teach maths and science in English continued, the Malays would lose their language and religion.
