Dear Editor
Two nights ago when my granddaughter Anita Balasubramaniam came for dinner, she showed me something on her phone called a Tiktok. It showed a young Indian girl in Penang at a forum only slightly younger than Anita who was asking our PM Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim a question.
The child in the phone explained that she needed time to ask her question, and proceeded to place it in context with an explanation as a commentary, as would be the right thing to do.
To my shock and horror, the Prime Minister cut her short several times and told her to cut to the chase. This is a young student, in a hall full of people, who has had the courage to prepare a question for the Prime Minister and ask it.
What harm would it have caused for the Prime Minister to reciprocate with courtesy and listen to her ? The forum was titled a dialogue and in my books, dialogues are discussions between people. Not a one way street.
However, my real source of distress and disturbance was how the Prime Minister lectured the child during his reply. Instead of answering the question directly and moving on, he gave a political answer that ranged from the unconstitutional social contract (the social contract he was referring to is not in the Constitution) to how his political party would lose the election if the quota system were to be abolished.
My grandparents moved from Ceylon to Malaya for a better life. I grew up in Petaling Jaya and I am proud to say that my children, their children and I have good lives, relatively speaking.
The child in the phone also wants a good life, and has the right to ask questions, and a right to fair answers. Lecturing her and then assaulting her with politics opened old wounds in me, and deeply hurt me to the core. I dare say the poor child is now traumatised and possibly even terrified of ever speaking in public again.
At tea this late afternoon with my fellow retirees, the hot topic was about this child in the phone. Someone mentioned an NGO called the Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia, or PAGE, which has been promoting meritocracy in educational scholarships and university entrances. The ladies were aghast that this group now defends the Prime Minister’s cutting the child short and lecturing her, and has the gall to prescribe rules and etiquette of how to question and answer!
I may have only taught Science and Mathematics in a school in Section 4, Petaling Jaya, but I know enough that there is no such etiquette that questions posed in a dialogue cannot be prefaced with an explanation. For this PAGE to contradict itself on what it has been championing smacks of total hypocrisy too.
What transpired in Penang, and how a liberal NGO is now defending the Prime Minister whom we all thought would make a difference and be a better man have disheartened, depressed, demotivated and demoralised me and the ladies at tea today.
Once again we are reminded by the Prime Minister, no less, that we are a minority he can ignore and vilify at his whims. We will sit out this state election to teach the current administration that you cannot traumatise a young student so nonchalantly and not pay a price. The price is our vote, or lack of it, and now we ignore you.
K. Vasantha
Petaling Jaya
* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Agenda Daily.