Tamil Tiger Roars

Crimean War 2005

The Crimean War 2005; June 19, 2005, NST

Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu went ballistic today and accused the Malaysian Medical Council of trying to stop Indians from becoming doctors. He was upset with the council’s decision to stop recognising degrees from Crimea State Medical University (CSMU) in Ukraine, saying it was to "finish off" the many Malaysian Indians studying there.

"The MMC does not want many Malaysian Indians to become doctors. Today they will close CSMU. Tomorrow, they will close a university in Russia and another in Indonesia.

"There are about 700 Indian students aspiring to be doctors studying in foreign universities," he said, noting that MIC spent some RM30 million on them.

He said the MMC’s reason for de-registering CSMU did not make sense. "I will raise it at the Cabinet and if needed, I will raise it personally with the Prime Minister."
From next year, the MMC will not recognise medical and pre-medical courses at CSMU.

Its main grouse is that the university lowered its entry standards to such an extent that it was accepting arts stream dropouts and/or science stream students with poor grades.

But Samy Vellu countered: "The MMC said only students registering before Dec 31 this year would be recognised. What about those doing matriculation to go to CSMU?
"I don’t believe the MMC’s excuse, that CSMU was admitting poor quality students, is the actual reason for de-registering CSMU."

The Works Minister said it was not possible for students with poor grades to obtain places to study medicine. The reason: they had to produce a "No-Objection-Letter" from the Higher Education Ministry before applying for a study visa from the Ukrainian embassy.

"The ministry would not give letters for students with poor results. Earlier, they recognised the university. How come suddenly it has become sub-standard?
"I believe the MMC does not like to see many Malaysian Indians becoming doctors. That is their reason and MMC should be brave in saying that and not use other lame excuses."

He said he would not be making a fuss if at least 60 or 70 of the medical seats in local universities were given to Indian students.

"But we do not get that. We have no choice but look abroad to do medicine."

Datuk Dr Ismail Marican dismissed outright the allegation that the council was biased against Indians. The Malaysian Medical Council president said that the move to stop recognising Crimea State Medical University (CSMU) had nothing to do with race.

"We want students to be quality doctors when they graduate and not be short-changed," said the director-general of Health.
He said that the lecturer-student ratio was not conducive to producing good quality doctors.

"Our actual reason is that the ratio composition between lecturer and student was too great.

"There are about 1,100 Malaysian students there. Lecturers cannot concentrate on a large group like that."

He urged everyone not to politicise the issue or become emotional.

Dr Ismail said recognition of a medical university was done after technical evaluation.

"Even local universities do not have blanket approval. They too undergo evaluation two or three years once."

He noted that the Government had tried to help Indian medical graduates from unrecognised universities.

For example, many of the 200 students required to sit for the Medical Qualifying Examination (MQE) are Indians and they have been given three opportunities to pass the examinations.

He also clarified that although CSMU would no longer be recognised from Jan 1, students could still study medicine there but they would have to pass the MQE before being allowed to practise here.

He said the Government may review CSMU’s status after several years if the lecturer-student ratio improved and if the facilities were better.

"We cannot react emotionally in this situation. We have to ensure quality doctors so that our health service is of quality.

"Anybody can be a victim if the doctors we have are not of quality.

"Even Samy Vellu can be a victim if he or someone he knows was treated by a doctor of sub-standard quality."

In the Column, Plain Talk, Brendan Pereira has this to add:

WHEN in doubt, demand transparency. That seems to be the motto in the country in recent weeks. A mood of disbelief has been slathered over several issues that have come along. And yet the cynics should not be blamed for their pessimism, their growing love affair with conspiracy theories or the belief that race trumps everything else in Malaysia.

Opinions are formed on the information that is available in the public domain. The less information there is, the greater the chance that the public will use rumour, speculation and perception as the basis for reaching a conclusion.

Nothing quite demonstrates this reality as the current debate over the award of scholarships by the Public Service Department and discussion over the elevation of judges.

No one quite knows why some 400 top scorers in last year’s Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia failed to obtain scholarships despite having a sackful of A1s and enough extra-curricular activities to make Marion Jones feel like a slouch.

All political parties and parents know is that like clockwork every year, there are hundreds of bright students left disappointed. That many are left without scholarships is acceptable.

Making everyone’s dream of becoming a doctor, lawyer or dentist come true is a Utopian concept. In the real world, ambition is often punctured by the lack of resources. It costs up to RM300,000 to educate one Malaysian student abroad for four years.

This year, more than 1,000 of the country’s best and brightest were offered scholarships by the PSD. Some 2,000 were left disappointed. Next year, even more will be nursing heartaches, bet on it.

Why? Because the number of SPM students obtaining a string of As will increase. That has been the trend.... But what these students and their parents do not deserve is an opaque system of selection.

Till today, no one knows how much weightage is given to the interview process or family background. No one even knows how many scholarships are up for grabs. No one even knows the composition of the selection panel.

Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and several MCA politicians were spot on when they said that the objectives and criteria for awarding PSD scholarships should be made public.

"This seems to be a seasonal problem. But we don’t want to face this every year," Hishammuddin said. "We don’t want to get a few hundred appeals every year from students who feel they did not get the scholarship they deserve."

MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu was even more stinging in his comments. "Our Prime Minister wants the ministries, ministers and agencies to be transparent. What is so special about PSD that they need not be transparent?’’

He is right. What Malaysians do not want or deserve is a wall of silence from the PSD every June. Neither do they deserve stock answers from a junior-ranking civil servant. The paucity of information only gives room for fiction to become fact.

No one knows the criteria used in promoting nine judges to the superior courts — four to the Federal Court and five to the Court of Appeal. Did they have a track record of writing good judgments speedily? Did they clear the backlog of cases diligently? Or did they have a superior understanding of the law? No one knows.

In a simple and solemn ceremony at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya on Friday, Justices Richard Malanjum, 52, Arifin Zakaria 54, Nik Hashim Nik Ab Rahman, 62, and S. Augustine Paul, 60, were appointed as Federal Court judges. Five other judges, James Foong, 59, Azmel Maamor, 63, Mohd Noor Abdullah, 65, Zaleha Zahari, 56 and Zulkefli Ahmad Makinuddin, 54 were promoted to the Court of Appeal.

As soon as the appointments were made public, there was a buzz in the legal fraternity, with some speculating why more senior members of the Bench were overlooked in this promotion exercise. The speculation ranged from the innocent to the insidious. And yet all this misguided talk can easily be doused — if only the selection process of the judges is made more transparent. At present, judicial appointments are decided by two people — the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice. The list of candidates is circulated to the Malay Rulers.

A better system will surely be one where the selection of judges is done by a judicial commission, comprising senior lawyers, respected retired judges and prominent Malaysians. This commission must set out the criteria for selection and ensure that the consultative process is not secretive.

Many Commonwealth countries have made the system of appointing judges more transparent. Canada, for instance, has established a Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee in each province, comprising judicial and legal representatives and non-lawyers. Judicial appointments are confined to those approved as suitable for appointment by the committee.

In New Zealand, in response to criticism that the judiciary was remote and unrepresentative of the community, a Judicial Appointments Board was established comprising representatives from the Bench and Bar and members of the public. The board makes a recommendation on judicial appointment once a vacancy occurs. It advertises the judicial position and reviews all applications. A ranked list of at least two candidates is then given to the Attorney-General who makes the final recommendation to the Governor-General.

It is about time Malaysia pinched some ideas from these countries and lifted the shroud of secrecy on how appointments to one of the most important institutions in the country is made. Otherwise, doubt and innuendo will cast a shadow each time a judge is selected or elevated.

NST EDITORIAL: Fussy over scholarships
June 19, 2005

THE central question in the annual hullabaloo over scholarship awards is this: Is every student who maxes out on his school exam results entitled to have the nation pay for his further education in some of the world’s most expensive universities?

The answer, of course, is one of means: He would if our money grew on trees. But each year, the number of straight-A students rises along with higher education costs. Eventually, the laws of supply and demand will have to be brought down hard on the culling process, and the best and the brightest will have to be measured by more exacting standards. None of this is controversial. Provided that the selection is rigorous, transparent and trusted, those who fail to get scholarships will have to get used to the fact that they were beaten by their superiors.

The controversy over Public Service Department scholarships thus arises from the belief that candidates had been chosen on less than meritorious grounds, or at least on merit that hasn’t been unambiguously defined. Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein is right: the PSD must make its procedures air-tight, especially when it is abundantly clear that it can’t possibly grant scholarships to all applicants who have made the grade in their academic qualifications.

No student with a dozen As will be happy with losing to another with 10 As on the basis of an interview or some other subjective value — particularly when that unhappiness can be readily magnified by community leaders out to make a fast political buck. The PSD says that, like scholarship bodies and universities overseas facing similarly increased demands, it continues to add more layers of filtering, such as an English essay test to be introduced this year, to make sure that only the most deserving succeed.

Yet, the "most deserving" will be subject to endless query as long as the department is felt to be even the slightest bit arbitrary in its decision-making. It should therefore do more to take the selection criteria — both academic and non-academic — beyond students’ SPM results.

Britain’s Oxford University, for example, reintroduced entrance examinations last year, nine years after they were scrapped, because A-levels were seen to be not good enough to pick out the smartest youngsters. The United States’ independently-run Scholastic Assessment Tests, taken after school-leaving diplomas, also evaluate students over and above what they learn in class.

Perhaps the PSD should emulate the old Oxford and Cambridge specialist-level exams, which require an extra three months to a year of study before applicants can expect to get a foot in the door of the two prestigious universities.

The PSD scholarship, which costs taxpayers between RM300,000 and RM800,000, ought to be no less distinguished, either in the quality of the recipient it embraces or in the process with which he was chosen.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS:

What has gone wrong? Why are we in this mess? Will the situation gets corrected or will it get worse?

The fundamental issue is undeniable that the system management had outsmart themselves when seeking solution to a problem. Over-zealous officers thinks they can over-ride the system approach by introducing creative and innovative ideas which can help them leap-frog and acquire competency without enrichment of knowledge and skills through the normal process.

But it is like building a house without building a proper foundation. The footing is layed on marine-clay and the structure is quickly put up in order to see the building completion.

But not too far in the distant future, the building will show signs of cracks and defects will surface. Then, it will become necessary to pull down the structure and rebuilt the whole foundation from scratch. The then process of re-building will become more painful and onerous. We will then be back to where we had started from - i.e. Ground Zero!

If we are desirous of building competency, we had to groom our people thru' the proper process, step-by-step, taking the pain of natural growth and building the competency one at a time. Those childrens who aspire to be professionals must work hard and be willing to sacrifice their time and effort to acquire knowledge and competency. There is no short cut to achievement. Envy will kill the process and meritocracy will always prevail. You can run around in circle, but you will still reach where you have started.

Wisdom and perseverence is the ultimate solution to acquire solid strong results.

God Bless the over-zealous officers.