The Malaysian Insider
August 29, 2013

Eventually, it was going to happen. The decades of cutting corners; relegating meritocracy to an afterthought; putting political expediency above everything else; promoting the subservient; dumbing down the education system to allow droves to pass with paper qualification but little else.

Eventually it was going to happen. A pall of mediocrity settling on every corner of Malaysia, affecting the quality of policy-making, thinking, nudging common sense and logic out of the picture and paralysing once hallowed institutions.

So we should not feign surprise that the only contribution that a Cabinet minister like Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek can make to the Merdeka season is to inform Malaysians that the government may pass legislation to make it compulsory to fly the Jalur Gemilang, the national flag.

He is a product of the system. He attended a school system that suffocated thinking, promoted rote-learning, and did little to plant and nurture ideas of integrity, equality, fairness and justice. Read the rest of this entry »