One of the first things I was taught as an undergraduate in Universiti Malaya some 13 years ago was the sanctity of the university as a bastion for independent thought. It was said and, I think, accepted in those days that the university was next to parliament in the level of freedom to discuss, debate, refute public policy, social ills and other philosophical issues under our Malaysian sun.

However, by the time I was a postgraduate student, working on my MA degree, the very same university had been dragooned into near intellectual silence by government interference. Of course, things had heated up because of the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim but the real victims in this process of the tightening of the screws on intellectual freedom were the students.

Hence, the new generation of undergraduates were taught to believe that intellectual freedom exists only outside Malaysia, particularly in the West or the Far East (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan). Many undergraduates these days, while exhorted to be multicultural, are unprepared for the global environment. They have reverted back to a kind of parochialism, preferring the comforts of a dark and dank world.

To use a popular Malay saying, they have crawled back under the coconut shell. Hence, when they are faced with the challenge of getting a job in Malaysia's increasing high-tech job market, they fail miserably.

Leaves of Economic Grass says that the NEP is the real culprit for this state of affairs. There has been countless letters stressing the unfairness of the Malaysian education system and there are reports that a certain vice-chancellor is about to be ejected from his position due to some unfathomable political debacle. All these matters are related and I will now try to make sense of them.

Leaves of Economic Grass is correct to suggest that in a globalised economic world where capitalism and profit are the names of the game, one cannot revert to the protectionist practices suggested by Noor Yahaya Hamzah . The NEP is, in this sense, a sheltering force. But the genesis of the NEP and its original aims, if anyone in Malaysia ever cares to take a close look at them, was never aimed to be racial.

Its main doctrine was the eradication of poverty regardless of race. Our present prime minister was among those in the committee that drew up the NEP and in its report and he together with other Umno politicians, agreed to the setting-up of an independent ombudsman, responsible to Parliament and the Yang Di Pertuan Agong, to monitor the implementation of the NEP.

Now, one other objective of the NEP was to eradicate the identification of a particular race with a particular sector of industry. I am not a political historian but I think thus far, the lack of any accountability on the part of the executive to Parliament (as enshrined in the NEP) has resulted in one predominant race being associated with the civil service, the army, the air force, the police and most obviously, public universities.

Anything public is now associated with the bumiputera while anything outside is associated with non-bumiputera or more specifically the Chinese. It is sad that many eminent Malaysian academics have dedicated their whole lives to debunking such economically-inspired stereotypes but such ideas have already proliferated into the very kernel of the next generation, tainting yet to be born Malaysians of the future.

I am not saying that the other races are benevolent in 'protecting' their own turf and I would be a terrible hypocrite if I did not admit that I have profited from the system having been educated in the University of Malaya for two degrees at nominal expense to my civil servant single parent.

But I also think of my brother and his many friends who never had the opportunities that I had. I felt a great pang of guilt when reading the letter by Cheekin but the reality is that there was no level-playing field not because of the NEP, but because of the implementation of the NEP.

If government aid was truly race-blind, the burden of Cheekin, whose father is a blacksmith, would be much lightened. Noor Yahaya Hamzah would also not have to ask Malaysian graduates to take-up 3D jobs (demeaning, dangerous and dirty). If there was public accountability standing over our politicians, the poor vice-chancellor of one of Malaysia's finest public universities would not have to cringe and assume a low-profile with regards to his progressive ideas.

What Malaysians of all races should insist upon is not absolute meritocracy (for where will people like Cheekin be? Think also of the rural poor) but for the full-implementation of the NEP with its proper safeguards.

Gerakan is said to be the 'conscience' of the Barisan Nasional, while Umno is supposed to be the champion of the Malays. The MIC was the first political party of the nation and the MCA was started because the Chinese were being herded into concentration camp-style new villages. Do any of these parties or its members feel the urgent need to once again recall their activism and help Malaysians regardless of race and creed?