BTN – why is Muhyiddin backing Ahmad Maslan and not Nazri?
Lim Kit Siang
When asked about the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) controversy after the National Land Council meeting in Putrajaya on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Ahmad Maslan, who is directly responsible for Biro Tata Negara (BTN), had already given the necessary explanation.
Asked whether the BTN course would be revamped, Muhyiddin said this was not a new course, that it had been decided on by the Cabinet a long time back and that he did not need to explain further. (Sin Chew 5.12.09)
Muhyiddin was being most irresponsible for evading the issue, especially as the Deputy Prime Minister had led the UMNO hawks including the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, the Agriculture Minister Datuk Nor Omar, the Women Minister Datuk Shahrizat Jalil in Cabinet in defending the divisive, racist and seditious BTN indoctrination courses.
Muhyiddin cannot be unaware of the public spat between Ahmad Maslan and the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, over the disagreement over the Minister’s statement that the Cabinet had decided to “revamp” the BTN course “to fall in line with the prime minister’s 1Malaysia concept” so that its curriculum will be “inclusive rather than divisive” and that a directive to revamp the BTN courses has already been given to the chief secretary of the government.
This was disputed by Ahmad Mazlan, the supremo of BTN, who said it was an “upgrade” or “improvement” and not a revamp, declaring that there was “nothing wrong with the current course structure”.
In explaining the upgrade of the BTN course to incorporate the 1Malaysia module, he said:
