By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Penang on Sunday, 20th May 1990:
Chinese community must be vigilant to ensure that the Boards of Management furore is not a Barisan ‘smoke-screen’ to hide other provisions detrimental to Chinese education
The Chinese community and all concerned about mother-tongue education must be vigilant to ensure that the current furore over the Barisan Nasional’s proposal to abolish the Boards of Management of 432 ‘fully-aided’ Chinese primary schools is not a smokescreen to hide other provisions in the 1990 Education Bill which highly detrimental to Chinese education.
The Chinese educational bodies and the Chinese community must not fully focus on the Boards of Management issue, and allow other provisions which may be equally or even more damaging to Chinese education to be smuggled into the 1990 Education Bill.
Is there an ulterior motive to keep Section 21(2) by engineering furore on abolition the Chinese Primary School Boards of Management?
The Boards of Management furore, which was created by the announced of Deputy Education Minister, Woon See Chin, about its abolition in 432 Chinese primary schools, could be deliberately engineered to serve another ulterior purpose.
This is to create the condition whereby the Chinese community are so afraid that the Boards of Management of the 432 ‘fully-assisted’ Chinese primary schools would be abolished that they would be prepared to agree to the ‘temporary’ existence of Section 21(2) of the 1961 Education Act.
At the right time, a MCA or Gerakan ‘saviour’ will come out with a solution to overcome the imminent abolition of the Boards of Management of the 432 Chinese primary schools: the whole 1990 Education Bill will be deferred until the next general elections, including the repeal of Section 21(2) of the 1961 Education Act.
The DAP will find such a ‘solution’ completely unacceptable.
Tomorrow, the six-man Cabinet Committee on the 1990 Education Bill will meet for the fourth time. I call on the MCA, Gerakan and SUPP Ministers to present a common front tomorrow, and demand that the Education Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, should present two Education Bills in next month’s Parliament.
The first Bill is to repeal Section 21(2) of the 1961 Education Act immediately, which is to take effect before the next general elections. The second Bill is to embody all the government’s proposals for the new Education Act for the 1990s, which should be tabled for first reading only. The public and all interested persons or organisations should be given at least six months to study and debate the new Education Act proposals.