The government could pay a heavy price for missing the Dec 31 deadline set by the Federation of Malay Writers Associations (Gapena) to stop teaching Mathematics and Science in English.

Gapena and other non-governmental Malay organisations plan to take legal action against the government and to hold a protest rally.

The decision was reached last night by 20 representatives of these groups, who held a three-hour meeting at Gapena’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

hashim ismail Second secretary Hashim Ismail said a mammoth rally would be held on Feb 15 - dubbed 152 to symbolise Article 152 of the federal constitution, which states that Malay is the country’s official language.

“Even though there was debate over whether to hold the rally straight away or wait until February, we decided to give the government one last chance to explain itself up to then,” Hashim told Malaysiakini.

He said the rally will have a ‘theme’ in that coffins will be used to represent ‘the death of the Malay language’.

However, there has been no decision as to whether the protest - which will start at Gapena’s office - will end at Parliament House, Istana Negara or a “police station where we will lodge a report against the government”.

Yesterday, the writer’s association had reiterated that it would take legal action against the government, which has missed the deadline and failed to explain their stance.

wee ka siong Two weeks ago, Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong was quoted as saying that responses and feedback from the public would have to be studied before the government arrives at the best decision.

Conflicting claims

Late last month, the ‘Save Malay Language’ secretariat - comprising Malay NGOs and opposition parties - had agreed to hold a 100,000-people gathering in March, to petition the Agong to intervene in the matter.

Organising committee head Hasni Abas claimed, when contacted, that Gapena had adopted a ‘wait and see’ attitude last night, “neither objecting to nor supporting our plan, but we will definitely go on with our rally”.

National Writers’ Alliance (Pena) president Baharuddin Zainal, who was at the meeting, dismissed the claim saying that Gapena and other representatives had given their support.

“We support the rally. The more activities to voice our dissatisfaction over this issue, the better,” he said.

bersih rally istana negara tv 101107 large crowd The rally is inspired by that held by the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih). It saw 40,000 people taking to the streets of Kuala Lumpur on Nov 10, 2007.

Baharuddin also indicated that the second stage of the protest will involve legal action, when all else has failed “from holding dialogues to meeting the prime minister”.

“We will however will remain non-partisan. We choose political culture rather than political parties in this matter,” he said.

He also commented on the National Union of Teaching Profession view that the government should teach the two subjects in English only from Form 1.

“We would not want it that way. There are no two ways about it. We just want it to be scrapped all the way through,” he said firmly.

Gapena and other groups have so far collected RM7,000 in donations to defray legal costs.

Representatives of Persatuan Kebangsaan Pelajar Islam Malaysia, Lembaga Pembangun Sastera Perak, Linguistic Association, History Association and Malaysian Translators Association were among those at the meeting.