Don Quixote's Keris

“We discussed the keris. If you want to look at it negatively, of course you will say it is something to hurt. If you look at positively, you will see the responsibility of the person kissing the keris to carry out his duties,” he explained.

“If he does not comply with it, the keris is used against him. In the process of getting it through to the people, of course we have to face the sceptics out there. I hope the people will not see the keris as offensive or something to be feared.”
--- Hishammuddin

It would be very interesting to know if a MCA Youth leader, swing a Gong Fu sword in the next MCA General Assembly, kissing it and declaring that MCA will bathe it in blood for the Chinese ? Just see whether UMNO Youth is so accommodating. Perhaps Hishammuddin should bring along a M16 in the next meeting! Or I might say,perhaps, it’s really a matter of cultural difference.

Air cleared over keris act - The Star
It's a matter of cultural difference - New Straits Times



Months of negotiating the thick forest that grew up from the old issues of race, religion and wealth distribution has led us far from the main road to our destination.

Precious time has been lost and much energy wasted.

While Malaysians argue among themselves over their rights and who has more and who less, the journey has become more arduous, and the distance longer.

Take a look at these signposts on the roadmap.

Malaysia was the sixth largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) 10 years ago, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). Last year, we were at the 62nd spot.

In the 2006 Global Competitiveness Index compiled by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, Malaysia’s ranking dropped one rung to 26th, from 25th last year. In Asia, we are ranked behind Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

Unctad said the “most problematic factors for doing business” in Malaysia include government bureaucracy, corruption, crime and theft, restrictive labour requirements and an inadequately educated workforce.

The European Union, which accounts for 26% of total FDI approvals in the country in the last five years, has warned that Malaysia’s attractiveness to European investors is waning.

It attributed the trend to issues related to availability of skilled labour, visa issuance, intellectual property rights and lack of transparency and predictability in policies and markets.

Malaysia has even been placed last but one among 56 industrialised and rapidly industrialising countries in the 2007 Climate Change Performance Index, developed by Climate Action Network Europe.

In many ways and many sectors, Malaysia is falling behind the rest of the region and the world very badly.

The nation needs to be reminded that competition is all about winning...

To win, we have to know our strengths and weaknesses. We also have to find out what our competitors are doing right and what they have done wrong.

We should continue to do what we are doing right or adopt new ways to do them better.

We should drop what we are doing wrong. And as for things our competitors have been doing right, we should imitate, adapt and then improve on them.

Ultimately, to be No. 1, we will have to originate. Competition, therefore, is also about change and how we adapt to it.

Even if we are ahead, we must constantly remind ourselves that nothing remains the same over time. If we don’t stay one step or several ahead of the competitors, they will eventually catch up and move ahead of us.

In any competitive environment, winners can become losers, and losers can become winners.

Take one-time “loser” China, for instance. It is today the “factory of the world”, with an economy that is the fourth largest, after the United States, Japan and Germany.

What about Vietnam, the country from which hundreds of thousands people fled in small boats just a few decades ago? The United Nations recently described it as the next economic rising star after China.

Across the region, from India through Thailand to South Korea, countries are enhancing their strengths, learning from their competitors and adapting global knowledge to local conditions.

They are building an economic ecosystem that generates wealth by harnessing the multi-dimensional capabilities of their people – from intellectual labour and entrepreneurship to technology, software, engineering, and even culture and the arts.

In the case of Malaysia, an economist with Citigroup Global Markets in Singapore has warned that the country is running the risk of being marginalised.

“It is not that Malaysia is moving backward,” said Chua Hak Bin as quoted in the The Straits Times. “It is simply not moving forward quickly enough.”

The Age in Australia is more direct, saying in a recent article that “it’s time Malaysia grew up”.

“It’s a tough world out there and there can be little sympathy for a country that prefers to argue about how to divide wealth rather than get on with the job of creating it,” the paper’s business writer Michael Backman wrote.( Read Here and Here )

It cannot be denied that Malaysia has been sidetracked for too long by unproductive arguments, driven by real or imaginary fears of ethnic groups.

I believe it is a good thing that these fears of the Malays and non-Malays are now out in the open. We now know what they are. With this knowledge, we know what must be done to address them and where to begin working to overcome them.

Within days of assuming office three years ago, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi outlined the 12 pillars of his mission to commit his administration to achieving the goals of Vision 2020, which also addresses this issue.

He is implementing the 9th Malaysia Plan (9MP), the first of three five-year plans in his National Mission to take Malaysia to 2020.

The 9MP puts us on track to build an advanced economy with balanced social development and a progressive society with high moral and cultural values.

Malaysia has travelled a good distance on the road to developed nation status in the last 16 years.

But the 14 years that remain to achieve the goal will be tougher because the environment has become more challenging. Abdullah has likened our journey towards 2020 to ascending a mountain: the climb to the base camp was challenging, but the real test lies ahead.

The Prime Minister is taking the nation to the next phase of the journey – the final assault.

We must accomplish that mission or we risk a calamity.

Malaysians should focus on moving forward. There is no need for long-drawn-out public debates that send the wrong signals to Malaysians and the outside world.

We should remember our competitors are outside our gates. If they win, it is Malaysia and all of us in the country that will lose out.

**********

Malaysians Taught in Local Tongue Lose on English

Educated and jobless
Poor in English or relevant skills, many local grads end up jobless
By Stephanie Phang - Bloomberg

Sevan Doraisamy earned a business management degree from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 1999. With limited English skills, he ended up working in a factory - in Singapore.

"I couldn't find any job” in Malaysia, said Doraisamy, 32, whose Singapore stint and subsequent jobs taught him the English he knows. He now recruits volunteers for the Centre for Independent Journalism in Kuala Lumpur.

"All this Malay-orientated when you go to university, but then when immediately switch to work environment, everything is in English. I speak like the sentence never end.”

Malaysia shifted to the Malay tongue, Bahasa Melayu, from English as the language of teaching in 1970. Now, universities are producing graduates who don't make the grade in the workforce.

In a country with 237,000 job vacancies, about 45,000 college grads are unemployed, mainly because of poor English, according to the government.

Many of those who have found work aren't using their degree skills.

"The cause of the under-employment? I'll give you one reason for it: English,” said Rafiah Salim, vice chancellor at Universiti Malaya, the country's oldest university.

"The only industry that's really using Bahasa is the government service.”

The glut of graduates was confirmed in 2005, when the government's Economic Planning Unit asked the unemployed to register for a survey to gauge who was out of work and why.

Nearly 60,000 jobless grads - equivalent to a quarter of those who finished their higher education this year - signed up. About 15,000 since have found work.

The finding prompted Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to budget a 53 percent increase in spending on education and training to $2.2 billion next year.

Investment declines

Malaysia risks losing more overseas investment to India and China if graduates don't have the right skills, said Gan Kim Khoon, head of research at AmSecurities Holdings in Kuala Lumpur.

Foreign direct investment fell 14 percent in 2005 to US$4 billion, the only decline among the 10 ASEAN countries.

Apart from learning little English, students are choosing subjects not suited to business employment, such as arts, Islamic studies and administration, said Gan, 43.

Almost 30,000, or 60 percent, of first-time graduates from public colleges in 2003 took arts degrees.

"Those are not very useful,'' he said. "There is no thought going into whether these are the kinds of graduates that the country needs.''

The government spent 8 percent of the $100 billion gross domestic product on education in 2002, more than neighbors Singapore or Thailand, according to the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute, a Kuala Lumpur-based research group.

Malays versus Chinese

Malaysia switched to Bahasa education in a bid to promote integration between the more than 60 percent of ethnic Malays and ethnic Chinese, who comprise a quarter of the 26 million residents.

Lawmakers also set college quotas from 1970 to 2002 to ensure that Malays gained access to professional jobs.

They rolled back some language rules in 2003, reviving math and science lessons in English starting in primary school. Lobbyists for wider use of Bahasa want that decision reversed.

Only underdeveloped countries "practice the colonial policy of teaching science subjects in a foreign language,” Hassan Ahmad, a former chief of the government body responsible for coordinating the use of Bahasa, told the Bahasa and Malay Literature Congress in Kuala Lumpur last month.

Proficiency in English is a key component of college training programmes introduced this year, said Deputy Higher Education Minister Ong Tee Keat.

Higher Education Minister Mustapa Mohamed didn't respond to requests for comment.

Call centres

Safura Mohd Hariri, 22, earned an information technology management degree from Multimedia University in Selangor in May. She waited six months to land a job as a systems analyst, and many of her peers now work in call centers where they don't need degree knowledge, she said.

About 50,000 high school graduates, 25,000 higher- education graduates and 20,000 degree-holders are unemployed, Deputy Human Resources Minister Abdul Rahman Bakar told parliament last month.

Colleges should ensure they have up-to-date textbooks and use English in lectures, said Rahmat Roslan Hashim, head of human resources at the Malaysian unit of Standard Chartered Plc, a British bank that makes two-thirds of its profit in Asia.

"Communication basically is the area where local grads lag,” Rahmat said. "About two generations lost English skills.”

Antiquated Skills

More than half of 3,800 recruiters and managers surveyed last year by online recruitment company Jobstreet Corp cited poor English as the reason for rejecting graduates.

They also blamed antiquated skills in subjects such as engineering.

"People don't have the type of skill sets that companies are looking for, whether it's commercial or technical,” said Suresh Thirugnanam, vice president at Jobstreet in Cyberjaya, Selangor.

Nga Lik Hing, 22, gained a multimedia degree from Universiti Putra Malaysia in May and now earns M$1,500 (US$422) a month keying in data for an online recruitment company.

Employers want different skills from those he learned, Nga said. Questions at interviews for English-language jobs aren't easy, either. "Like, why our company want hire you,” Nga said. "Sometimes don't know how answer.”


Malaysia Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Asia Hishammuddin Hussein Keris