Musa Mohamad has been fumbling from one fiasco to another ever since he assumed the minister of education post. His approach to handling education issues and policies seems to be highly ad hoc, lacking careful and thoughtful planning.

Take the latest fiasco in the so-called merit-system in admitting students into public universities. With a single careless and thoughtless stroke, he unfairly excluded thousands of diploma holders from entering universities. And what was his response to his own mistake? His retort basically narrowed down to: "Don't bother me, go and look for a job."

If it is necessary to exclude the diploma holders from entering public universities, a fair and more responsible approach would be to phase out their intake in a gradual manner. He could have announced that from 2005 (say) diploma holders will not be included in the university admission process.

In this way, students who are planning to start their diploma courses now would know well in advance that their diploma would not gain them entrance into public universities.

Musa's head is obviously too small for the minister of education's hat. It is time the public sends a strong message to him lest he does more damage to the educational system of our country.

I suggest that malaysiakini put up a poll to find out if the general public is happy with Musa's performance as the education minister.