CYBERJAYA: PAS today promised to bring back the quota system for entry into public universities and to make the national language as the language for all subjects taught in the national education system if it wins the 14th general election, Malay Mail Online reported.
The report says, PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang justified the promise to use Bahasa Malaysia as the medium to teach subjects in the “national education system”, citing that “Unesco conducted a study, all countries where the education used the mother tongue became developed nations — Germany, Japan, China, Korea.
“Countries that used foreign languages in their education used a longer time, there was a loss of time, and cannot produce sufficient academics,” he said after launching the manifesto for PAS and its allies Parti Ikatan Bangsa Malaysia (Ikatan) and Barisan Jemaah Islamiah Se-Malaysia (Berjasa).
“It doesn’t mean that we hapuskan (do away with) foreign languages. Foreign languages are important for learning knowledge from various sources, but to educate the citizens in a large scale, it must be the mother tongue — besides the national language, including the languages of races in Malaysia, the Chinese language, Tamil language and Iban language and others, those cannot be stopped,” he added.
Bahasa Malaysia is the national language but is not the mother tongue for all Malaysians, who come from diverse ethnic groups.
As for the promise to reinstate the quota at public institutions of higher learning, PAS said in its 25-page manifesto that it will “balance the education disparity between the rich and the poor, as well as the urban and rural” Malaysians.
PAS did not elaborate however on the nature of the quota system that will be restored.
