(Petaling Jaya, Thursday): The MCA Ministers are the biggest disappointment
in the last two Cabinet meetings as they have failed to raise and rectify the
multiple injustices of the unfair
and unprofessional merit-based university selection system this year with the
rejection of applicants who deserve places in public universities and the absurd
formula used to match the matriculation results and STPM grades.
It is clear that the MCA Ministers are too
pre-occupied with MCA affairs to be able to address the people’s issues and
problems, as in the past two weeks of nation-wide furore over the unfair and
unprofessional system of meritocracy, no
MCA Minister had spoken up
to demand that more public university places should immediately
be allocated to deserving students who had been issued with rejection
notices, or that the formula used to match the two completely different
examinations of matriculation and STPM is unfair and unacceptable, or that there
should be a common university entrance examination for all Malaysian
pre-university students.
The MCA Ministers have also been unable to get
the Cabinet to address the great injustice
suffered by the tens of thousands of diploma holders whose application
for university admissions were not even considered, although this was the
successful route for some 5,000 diploma holders last year
to continue to first-degree university courses.
It is a grave matter of concern that at a time
when there are increasing calls by enlightened Malay academicians and
intellectuals for a common university entrance examination to end the suspicions
and distrust engendered in a plural society
by an unfair matching system of completely different pre-university
examinations, MCA Ministers have shown no support or even interest in such
proposals.
DAP calls on all Ministers to give serious
consideration to the introduction of junior colleges for
all pre-university students to prepare for a common university entrance
examination in the interests of meritocracy and national unity.
(23/5/2002)