The Honourable Member of Parliament for Bandar Kuching was right in his quest to speak in English when his turn to debate the Budget for 2016 came.

Perhaps we have forgotten that when the two Borneo states were invited to form the Federation of Malaysia together with Malaya and Singapore, just so that there would be a slight advantage in the Malay and indigenous population against that of the Chinese majority Singapore which was also invited, an 18 and 20 point agreement was signed prior to the joining of the Borneo states.

Point 2 of the said 18 and 20 points for Sarawak and Sabah spoke about language. It was very clearly stated that the English language shall be an official language for the states of Borneo for all purposes, state or federal and without a limitation of time.

So what the honourable Member of Parliament for Bandar Kuching did was well within the ambit of the laws and within the confines of the Article 152 of the federal constitution which doesn't spell out clearly that English cannot be used.

It was indeed very silly, childish and stupid of those who jumped and opposed when the MP spoke in English. Surprisingly some of the ones who opposed came from the Borneo states as well. This clearly goes to show the level of mind moulding or indoctrination which the centre (Putrajaya/ peninsular Malaysia) has successfully imbibed into the minds of the current-day Borneans.

We today suffer from such a lack of understanding of the language in which we were administered for a century and more before becoming independent. Yes, the English were our colonisers, Yes, they profited from our natural resources and Yes, they drafted the laws and kept us divided so that we would be easy to manage. But despite all this, they left behind a legacy and well-run administrative system which we have just adopted on today.

All this could not have been possible without the usage of the English language. All we did was to literally translate from English to Malay and that is what we are doing till today. The situation has become dire today because there are just no more quality teachers left to teach any more.

We seem to think of this as a very minute problem which can be pushed under the carpet but the current dire state of affairs clearly shows that we are just nowhere near our closest neighbour when it comes to the usage of English in our daily activities. There was a report recently that a fairly large number of would be doctors had just given up on being doctors because they just couldn't cope with the vast usage of English in field of medicine.

That is not all, we have many who are in cushy top positions in the civil service who are just very uncomfortable when it comes to communication in English be it verbal or written.

What the chief minister of Sarawak has done is with great foresight and hopefully the chief minister after him does not reverse his good decision of making English a second official language for Sarawak and its territories. The Borneo states should make this as the first stepping stone for greater autonomy from Putrajaya.

One does not think that Sabah will have the gall to do what Sarawak had done when it comes to the usage of English. Sabah is just too concentrated with agents and apple-polishers from the centre to go against it and make good policies.

A glimmer of hope

But nevertheless there is still a shimmer of hope for the North Borneans if the younger generation of leaders take over from the current set who just can’t seem to distance themselves from the indoctrination of the centre.

If we still continue to believe that we can do without English, we would be bluffing ourselves and going in the wrong direction. We have already spoilt the future of a generation of young Malaysians who are just unable to communicate in English.

Many are desperately trying and that is where one sees a new creole language which is now emerging which we can proudly say to be the product of desperation of the youth of today. It is a language which has got a little of Malay, English, Chinese dialects and Tamil and it is communicated in writing by using sms (short messaging service) text. This can now be even seen in resumes and letters which these youth of today write.

But where is this taking them? Have we forgotten how to read and write well, like our English teachers of the past had taught us?

It is sickening to note that the education system is treated like a political tool to mould and socially engineer the next generation to be automatons who will not oppose and obediently comply with the current federal administration which aims to be in power perpetually.

Year in, year out when a new star comes in as the education minister, he tries his luck in some new creation by issuing some new directives and policies which the secretary-general and director-general of the ministry follow obediently because they need to ‘look for lunch’ or in our creole ‘cari makan’. Learning Math and Science in English was a step in the right direction but we had our language nationalists to contend with.

The teachers, a large majority of whom were Malay, just weren’t happy with Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s policy but the good doctor gave the right antidote for the sick state of affairs of our education system then.

Now with the policy being reversed again, we will now have to be prepared for another generation of frustrated youth who will finish school knowing only Malaysian creole and not proper English which will put them on the world stage. Such frustration will lead to extremism and eventually we will see Islamic State cells mushrooming here.

Learning and speaking in English is seen as anti-national and anti-government, so if one would want to ‘look for lunch’ or in our creole ‘cari makan’, one would have to learn to behave stupidly or in an acceptable manner so that one can continuously ‘look for lunch’.

Flawed argument

The argument that the rural kids will not be able to match the urban kids in English is a flawed one. It is all in the hands of the Education Ministry and the teaching force. If we had the Ahmads, Khalids, Fatimahs, Dollahs, Tans, Lims, Wongs, Muthus, Kumars, Sivas of yesteryear from all the kampungs, small towns and estates being able to speak and write English well, why have we slackened to this state today?

Isn't it political meddling? Isn't it poor administration on part of the top decision-makers in the ministry? Isn’t it continued apple-polishing of politicians by the top bureaucrats from the ministry which creates these sort policies which will affect the future of the youth of this country?

Is the government of the day afraid of a Malay society that is well-versed in English and can articulate and debate well in that language? Is English deliberately kept on the back burner so that we will continuously produce half-baked graduates who will only be good order-takers instead of becoming great leaders of the nation with good foresight for a multi-racial and cultural society like ours? Why can't the Malays of today think ahead?

Just look at some of the Al-Jazeera and Australian Broadcasting Corporation news channel presenters, some are Malays from Singapore and Indonesia who have made the grade and are excellent news presenters and journalist. Our people can’t even come near them.

We need to go back to our archives to see how we started and how we produced great speakers of the language and how our parliament and state assemblies roared with speakers who had an excellent command of the language like the late Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore before August 1965, the Seenivasagam brothers of the PPP from Perak, our first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, our first home minister and later deputy prime minister Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, opposition stalwarts like Karam Singh, Tan Chee Khoon, V David and many more.

We don’t need to look elsewhere, all we need is good policies and implementation without political meddling. Governments can come and go but the education system must stand strong and produce good and capable graduates who can’t form an opinion and think.