TAR UC – Remember Kiasu Guan Eng in GE15
In order to punish MCA, DAP has inadvertently penalised UTAR/TAR UC and many poor Chinese students who look to it for further education opportunities.
KTemoc Konsiders
I wrote an article with the title “Don’t let political struggle take down TARC” in this column on November 29 last year. In the article, I concluded that politics is not about fighting for supremacy. If we really must compare, we should compare who has done a better job. Any fight involving politics must not drag education into the picture.
One year has since passed and we continue to get embroiled in the controversies over whether politics should stay out of education at all. There is no need of separating education from politics if political intervention is non-existent in the first place.
As a matter of fact, we should have mustered all the strength we can employ regardless of political affiliation, including the government and political parties on both sides of the divide, to develop our education sector.
For the past several decades, the local Chinese community has been able to develop the Chinese language education in the country thanks to the non-partisan concerted efforts of DAP, MCA, Gerakan Rakyat and large and small local Chinese associations. We did it yesterday, and should be able to do the same today and tomorrow.
Unfortunately, the development of UTAR/TAR UC today is not being bogged down by Umno or PPBM but ourselves, Chinese Malaysians!
DAP veteran Liew Ah Kim has made frequent advice lately to party leadership through videos posted on his Facebook account, but much of this has fallen on deaf ears.
This is what Liew had to say about the UTAR/TAR UC issue in his latest post: “There is one thing I would like to tell the democratic fighters: you must estimate that the grenade you are going to throw will hit the enemies and not yourself. When we talk about separating education from politics, we need to come to the full realisation that different issues may yield very different conclusions under democratic and undemocratic political systems. Simply put, will a more dominant race respect the views of the less dominant race when they talk about politics, education or economy? It is utterly unwise for either of two equally less dominant parties to act as if it is more dominant than the other, because you will eventually lose the people’s support. Unless you are prepared for far worse consequences, you should always look before you leap!”
People who lack the wisdom will never see far beyond them.
On the UTAR issue, while it appears that MCA is being beaten, it is the Malaysian Chinese community that actually gets bruised. Anyone familiar with the bitter history of the Chinese community will tell you that TARC has become the common legacy of the Malaysian Chinese community right from the very first day it was established.
The Chinese community came out with the money to set up TARC with the hope it would help the Chinese students rejected by public universities under the country’s quota system. For the past 50 over years, TARC has not disappointed the Chinese community, and has so far produced more than 200,000 competent professionals in various fields.
In order to punish MCA, DAP has inadvertently penalised UTAR/TAR UC and many poor Chinese students who look to it for further education opportunities.
