Braving objections from several quarters, veteran Chinese educationist Loot Ting Yee arrived in Indera Kayangan to speak about mother-tongue education at a Keadilan function to be held later this evening.

The 72-year-old educationist is the deputy chairperson of the United Chinese School Committees' Association of Malaysia or Jiao Zong.

However, Loot told malaysiakini that he was here in his personal capacity and not as a Dong Zong leader.

"I am here to talk about citizen's basic rights to mother-tongue education. Keadilan is my platform to express my views," he said.

Keadilan president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, PRM secretary-general Dr Sanusi Osman and Tommy Chin who is the secretary of the DAP-backed Save Our School (SOS) committee will also be present at the function.

Loot was instrumental in protesting against the Vision School concept - a government proposal to locate primary schools of different teaching mediums in one compound - in the Lunas, Kedah, by-election two years ago.

The Lunas state seat - held by Barisan Nasional's Dr Joe Fernandez whose murder paved the way for the by-election - fell into the hands of Keadilan as a result of a swing in Chinese votes. This shattered BN's two-thirds majority in the Kedah state assembly.

'Complicate the situation'

Last week, several educationists from Perlis aligned to MCA candidate Oui Ah Lan urged Loot not to come to Indera Kayangan as it will "complicate the situation".

On Sunday, Oui, a retired headmistress, expressed her disappointment with Loot's insistence to campaign for Keadilan candidate Khoo Yang Chong.

She claimed Loot had decided to "act against her" despite their previous experience of working together on the setting-up of a state-level umbrella body for all Chinese school committee members.

Loot said today personal friendship had little to do with his choice of candidate.

"No one can deny that Oui had helped us in those days but now that she stands on a BN ticket, it means that she is against the well-being of Chinese schools," he said.

He added the Umno-led government has always had a "forced assimilation" agenda to gradually abolish all vernacular schools.

Chinese groups have long expressed concern over the status of mother tongue education in the country.

According to the Education Act 1996, all vernacular schools do not have legal status and are under the prerogative of the education minister who can close down schools teaching in Chinese or Tamil whenever it is deemed necessary.

Hot issue

Last week, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had met with the leaders of several key Chinese organisations apparently to assure them that the Chinese schools will be well taken care of by the government.

Chinese education is one of the hot issues for the Indera Kayangan by-election on Saturday as 46.4 percent of the voters are Chinese.

Of the total 7,976 voters, 47.4 percent are Malays, 5.4 percent Indians and 0.7 percent other races.

The Indera Kayangan state seat fell vacant after incumbent Khor Liang Tee died of colon cancer on Dec19.