Immediately after the arrest of the Hindraf Five, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi declared that his administration would ensure that all Malaysians - regardless of race - would have access to education. But here’s the problem: he did not, perhaps conveniently, say if the access to education would be equal. Neither did he say to which education resources all Malaysians would have access, nor how.

A week later, MCA president and minister for housing and local government, Ong Ka Ting, announced yet another education programme. This one, though, like many others earlier, is aimed at improving opportunities for Chinese Malaysians. Here’s another problem: instead of promoting education opportunities for all Malaysians, Ong targeted only his own race.

At roughly the same time, Abdullah called - yet again - on all Malaysians to unite behind the ruling regime. He said his regime has the acumen to deliver the goods, and that the proof is in the pudding (it must be Christmas time).

Abdullah also used the term “bangsa Malaysia”. Nah, humbug. Here’s another problem: what was his “bangsa Malaysia” when he sent his Gestapo after Malaysians who had every democratic right to protest against his regime.

Within the week, Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein - the pathetically pretentious wanna-be prime minister who had brandished the longest keris ever to warn off the “non” bangsa Malaysians at a Malays-only party congregation - insisted that teachers should condemn those who dared to protest. These are the teachers, he said, who are charged with instilling those values in Malaysian school children that would make the nation.

But whose values? And whose nation? More, what can be said of his own values when he plied the keris in way that can only be said as inciting racial polarisation or, worse, racial hatred? Is Hishammuddin the right man for the education portfolio?

If the PM is serious ...

If Abdullah is serious about reforming the education policy so that it becomes accessible to all Malaysians and not just one race, he must set the parameters and the framework of that change. The first thing to say - at the very outset - is that Abdullah is his old self: he is full of baloney and spits it out like there’s no tomorrow.

And there isn’t a tomorrow. Let’s be clear: a genuine bangsa Malaysia has never existed, and a genuine bangsa Malaysia is never going to emerge. And the idea of ‘rakyat’ and the way it is applied has only hubristic value.

In fact, it is banal. And ‘banal’ is the core value of the Umno-dominated Barisan Nasional coalition government. Because if it were otherwise, if Abdullah had any commonsense, let alone foresight, he would have stopped Ong from using the state-controlled media to announce an education programme of opportunities that targets the Chinese of Malaysia only.

And if Abdullah were serious at all, he would have announced those parameters and policy framework by which all Malaysians would have equal access to education in Malaysia?

For example, beyond primary and secondary education, would Chinese and Indians have equal access to ‘government’ scholarships? Would Chinese and Indians have equal number of seats at universities in Malaysia? The same opportunities that bumiputera Malays have – in Malaysia and abroad?

But of course none of this proposed changes, mooted by whatever means, for whatever purposes, could ever stand the chance of being concretised simply because of one thing: the Education Act. Until this monstrously disingenuous piece of legislation is changed, which means changing the Constitution of Malaysia, nothing will change.

Abdullah probably knows this. As does Ong.

The divergence of approach to education that is deeply segregated along racial lines only underlines the deepening racial polarisation of Malaysia. The racist tendencies of Malaysian politicians is the basis of their political illegitimacy. It is shows their lack of intellect and imagination that cannot transcend their pragmatic racism that more and more eliminates the democratic rights of all non-Malay Malaysians - except the rich and the politically connected elite.