Malaysiakini : It's only Khairy who sees the bigger thing

It’s only Khairy who sees the bigger thing that UMNO, as a political creature, is not in isolation of the world and entities that surround it. He understands that UMNO can not simply live up to its obvious rhetoric - for it to rebrand and rebuild the party as UMNO needs to respond in the manner that equates its present and future tasks.

His stands on ISA and PPSMI are a good example of that. As regards the former, Khairy argues the importance of deterring measures to maintain civic and safe society, like ISA. Nevertheless, as policy is normally assessed based on what it does and not on what it intends to do, Khairy suggests a systematic review and collective discussion, with all parties including the oppositions, on the law – especially on the operations and governance of the statute. He disagrees with any kind of broad-brush approach that in a way oppresses the victims. To him, its important for the Government to be open and accept differences as an advantage amid challenging and demanding perspectives of the societies. To recognise and engage is the key.

Khairy’s viewpoint of PPSMI is also very clear. He empathises and understands the problems faced by rural students, who are not as advanced and exposed to the use and teachings of English as their urban contemporaries, the call to uphold the status of Bahasa Melayu as the national language as well as PPSMI’s policy-intent.

But his argument is the most solid and sensible of all, to him – if the intention was to improve the mastery of English language among students then the policies and actions should be directed towards English language proficiency programmes. While Khairy respects and wholly agrees with Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa, he prefers to view and evaluate the subjects based on its policy efficacy and cost-benefit analysis of continuing and not continuing the programme, and its impact to the important constituents of students and teachers.

by Hang Tegar