A CENTURY OLD SCHOOL

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at www.chedet.com on August 5, 2008 7:21 AM

1. I came back from a holiday in Croatia to attend the centenary celebration of my alma mater, Kolej Sultan Abdul Hamid or Sultan Abdul Hamid College recently.

2. It was a sentimental occasion. Seeing the old school, quite unchanged since I was admitted into Primary I way back in 1932 brought back many sweet/sad memories.

3. The centenary was more meaningful to me because the school was founded by my father who was also its first headmaster. He used to tell me of his experiences when he was headmaster there.

4. It was not in the present building of course. It was housed in a wooden Malay house in the middle of the town of Alor Star. Called the GES or Government English School, he had Malaysia's first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman as one of his students.

5. My father died in 1962. I thought he would like me to attend the centenary. I felt very nostalgic of the good old days when he used to teach me and my brother mathematics.

6. Before I was born he was sent to Pahang to teach at a school in Raub. Then he was sent to Johore to teach at an English school there.

7. Those were very distant places and he had to travel by boat with my mother and my eldest sister. My mother's second child, also a girl was born in Pahang. Mahadi my mother's eldest son was born in Johor Bahru.

8. Father got tired of shifting house and traveling to strange places. He came back to Alor Star and applied for an auditor's job with the Kedah Government.

9. Although his name is Mohamad bin Iskandar, people generally call him "Master" or Mohamad Iskandar. To honour him the primary school attached to Sultan Abdul Hamid College was named "Sekolah Iskandar" inadvertently honouring my grandfather instead. I have never complained.

10. At the main ceremony on the morning of Saturday 26th July the College named three ex-collegiate as the Collegiate of the Centenary. HRH the Sultan was the first, second came Tunku Abdul Rahman and I felt greatly honoured to be named as the third Collegiate of the Centenary. It would be another century before anyone will get this award.

11. To be able to study at the GES was a great privilege in those days. This was the first and only Government English School in Kedah. There were only 30 boys from the whole of Kedah admitted each year. I was one of the lucky ones.

12. Going to school was thrilling to me and I couldn't wait for school holidays to end.

13. I did fairly well and my Senior Cambridge Examinations result was good enough for me to be admitted into the medical faculty of the King Edward VII College of Medicine. I was given financial aid which was not a scholarship. The British Colonial Government apparently practised affirmative action because all my Chinese and Indian classmates had far better results than me. The examination results of the other six Malay students were even worse than mine. There were 70 plus students in all.

14. I owed my teachers in school a great deal. Only one of them, Mr. Zain, is alive today. He was a great teacher and spoke grammatically correct English all the time.

15. Schooling was such a great experience and I recall with fondness many rewarding events that I went through.

16. I hope and pray that all Malaysians remember their school days and the part that school plays in their lives. Getting an education right up to University level is easy now. But we must nevertheless feel grateful for there are more than one billion illiterate people in the world. For them the future promises very little.

STRANGE POLITICS

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at www.chedet.com on August 3, 2008 1:15 PM

Something strange is happening in Malaysian politics. Suddenly there is a lot of talk about cooperation and even merger between UMNO and PAS. Friendly and unfamiliar sounds are being heard from all sides.

I wonder whether it is a sudden concern about the need for Malay unity or it is the realisation that both PAS and UMNO have become very weak. True PAS has won more seats in Parliament than it had ever done before. It has even won control over the State of Kedah. But PAS is the weakest party in the opposition coalition or Pakatan Rakyat. This cannot be what PAS aimed for when it decided to soft pedal its Islamic State ambition in order to work with DAP and PKR.

PAS must want to replace UMNO as the dominant party in Malaysia. But despite its success in the 2008 General Election it is not even dominant in the opposition coalition.

Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on the other hand must be irked by his failure to get a two-third majority in Parliament. It is therefore unable to revise the amendments to the constitution made by previous Barisan Nasional Governments or to introduce his own amendments to the constitution. In any case not getting the usual two-third majority is like losing almost.

He knows he is regarded as a weak leader of a weak Government. His coalition partners do not show much respect for him even though they themselves are weak. And the opposition openly declare they want him to go on leading simply because he is weak; a kind of backhanded compliment.

To become strong he might want to embrace PAS as a coalition partner. Then he would have his two-third majority.

To do this he will have to offer his sweeteners - his usual solution to all problems. Maybe he would offer a second Deputy Prime Minister to (PAS President) Abdul Hadi Awang and Ministership to some other PAS leaders.

But his coalition partners may not take kindly to this plan. MCA, Gerakan and MIC are not likely to welcome this move. Neither would Sabah UMNO members and the other coalition partners in Sabah and Sarawak. The BN Government with PAS as a member would therefore be very shaky. UMNO itself would be very shaky as not every UMNO member would relish the idea of nice positions being given to their erstwhile rivals.

Such a coalition may give BN the two-third majority but it is not likely to please the elctorate. The Malay voters may or may not welcome this unity bid but their concern is with the leadership of Dato Seri Abdullah. They want him out. Participation by PAS in a BN still lead by Dato Seri Abdullah will not mean things would be any better.

By associating with Dato Seri Abdullah, accepting the sweets and soft pedaling PAS' Islamic State raison d'etre, PAS is likely to lose support.

The net gainer may be PKR, Anwar notwithstanding. After all there is clear evidence that many voters voted PKR simply because they wanted to be rid of Dato Seri Abdullah.

Malay unity is not a matter of Malay political parties embracing each other. Malay unity should be entrusted to politically uncommitted Malays. Neither UMNO nor PAS have the credibility needed for this task.

PAS has already laid down conditions. If UMNO accepts these conditions it will lose its non-Malay partners. On the other hand if PAS gives up its stated views on hudud and qisas etc it will lose the support of its followers.

Maybe a compromise can be worked out. But any compromise will result in a loss of faith and support by enough supporters of both parties to weaken them.

This is the dilemma if UMNO seeks PAS' support for achieving a two-third majority or PAS seeks UMNO's support to make it the dominant party in the opposition.

The solution to the present Malay feeling of insecurity is not a merger or some kind of co-operation between the Malay political parties. It lies in restoring UMNO to its previous strength. And this cannot be done for as long as Dato Seri Abdullah is there. There are several leaders in UMNO who are qualified to take over from him, leaders who are not influenced by the greed of their families, leaders who are willing to make sacrifices in order to restore pre-eminent position of UMNO within the BN. One of them could be Rais Yatim. Maybe in the end it would be Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, with Rais as deputy.

It is not the system that is wrong. For 50 years, half a century, the system had worked well. If it fails today it is not because it is wrong but because the leadership had failed to make it work.

The solution: Remove the leader responsible.