All Because of a University in Ukraine

Well... is official... and is on the front page of every major or minor newspaper in the country.

S. Sothinathan is suspended for 3 months from his government post (he is currently the Natural Resources and Environment Deputy Minister, the Secretary-General for MIC and MP for Teluk Kemang).

I guess this is the first time an actual member of the cabinet is suspended from his position. All because he "citicized his own government and thus breached party discipline".

After reading through the Hansard dated 21/6/2005 posted by Jeff on his blog, I think I will be quite happy if I were to be given a dollar for every uttering of the word "racist" in the parliamentary sitting on that day.

Ironically, the particular "numbskull" who only have a single vocabulary in his English dictionary throughout his entire outburst got off scot-free while the poor Sothinathan was to serve his "sentence" just for doing his duty as a member of MIC as well as an MP for his constituency.

Quoting some prominent local daily:

• "Sebagai anggota kerajaan, beliau tidak sepatutnya mengambil pendirian untuk mengkritik kerajaan. Ia melanggar disiplin parti"
• "Ini telah jelas melanggar disiplin sebagai seorang ahli kerajaan"
• "He's a member of the front bench, he should not have taken a stand like he did, criticizing his own government. It is certainly a breach of party discipline"

So I guess this should serve as a lesson to other members of the government, maybe to all BN MPs. I think they should publish a guideline of some sort to all current and aspiring BN MPs which enshrine the first law "DO NOT CRITICIZE THE GOVERNMENT" as oppose to the first amendment of the US Constitution. Otherwise, more unfortunate and innocent victims might be suspended.

Another thing they should include in their guideline would be "If you want to shout racial slurs at someone, do it in the Parliament, or else... ISA". This is very much condoned by the government of the day as exemplified by Nazri in his showcase piece.

Is a pity too that no one (including Samy) came to defend Sothinathan for speaking up his mind on the issue which is greatly affecting his community. Quality of education aside, PSD and MMC should have given due consideration about the plights of the students who are currently studying medicine at Crimea State Medical University (CSMU), Ukraine. The de-recognition is at the worst possible timing as quite a number of students had already been accepted into the said university for the current academic intake.

Understandably, MMC has their own standards about evaluating medicine courses offered by various university. However, basing on increased university intake and lecturer-to-student ratio as the only excuse to de-recognize the said university is hardly convincing that MMC is safeguarding the quality of doctors in the country. What about the state of medical faculties in local universities? Did MMC evaluate local medical faculties in an on-going basis to safeguard local medical graduates? or do MMC just recognize them as the de-facto standards when comparing to other universities in the world?

What next? IEM to recognize institutes that offer engineering courses? MIA to recognize accountancy courses? etc.....

Regulatory bodies like MMC should conduct their evaluation on a fair and just manner on all universities or institutions alike. Factors such as intake criteria, quality of lecturers, number of research papers published, international recognition etc. should be given due consideration instead of giving so much thoughts only to intake numbers or lecturer-to-student ratio.

What if MARA University were to come up with a medical degree? Will MMC evaluate them based on the above mentioned criterias? or it will be based on a different set of criterias since MARA University are reserved on for a certain portion of the country citizens.

Food for thought...