No one — not even Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka or Dong Jiao Zong — is against improving the command of English among students. They only oppose the silly ways and means proposed by the government to change the medium of instruction from Malay to English for the teaching of Science and Mathematics in primary schools, including national (Malay), Mandarin andTamil schools.

Another clear fact is that the opposition does not only come from Dong Jiao Zong or the Chinese alone, but also Malay-based parties like PAS, Keadilan and PRM, as well as many Malay educationists, linguists, interpreters and translators.

For Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian to pit Malays against Chinese is obviously wrong and assaybiyah. These Umno newspapers do not represent all Malays, but only Malays who blindly support Umno.

In fact, if Malays have to blame anyone for the poor standard of English in the community, they need not look further than Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian. These Umno newspapers once indoctrinated Malays with ultra-nationalism and xenophobic rejection of other languages like English and Chinese, which are both world languages now.

And now, it is the same Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian who take Malays to task for not being proficient in English. Moreover, they now even pit Malays against Chinese to divert Malay attention from the real causes of our intellectual under-development.

It is time for Malays to engage in self-criticism, and not blame our own problems caused by our own Malay leaders and mass media, on other races and nations.

Umno and the Malay press it controls must be courageous enough to admit their mistakes and beg the forgiveness of the Malay, Chinese, Indians and other Malaysians.

Otherwise, the combination of inferiority complexes, hubris and ego would only lead to the further destruction of Islam, Malay cultures, the Malaysian nation and society.