Tentang 'Ketuanan Melayu'

Saya rasa kita tidak perlu terlalu risau jika 'ketuanan Melayu' hilang atau tercalar. Ianya takkan tercalar selagi kita sendiri tidak membenarkannya tercalar. Integrity Melayu tercalar selalunya berlaku bukan kerana anasir luar, tapi kerana kita sendiri yang mencalarkannya dengan meninggalkan pengangan agama, menerima rasuah dan mengabaikan tanggungjawab dan amanah. Jika kita memandang politik, ekonomi dan sains sosial itu sebagai satu ibadah, kita mungkin akan selangkah lebih maju menjadi negara dengan Islam sebagai agama rasmi paling maju di dunia. Pandanglah membina negara yang aman dan makmur sebagai satu medium terbaik untuk keredhaanNya dan mencapai syurga di akhirat. Integrity Melayu itu dilindungi Islam yang kekal, bukan hanya sekadar dilindungi perlembagaan yang boleh diubah-ubah

On Education Reforms

Much has been said by politicians and the media about education reforms. Let me give my opinion on the education reform that I would like to see in our country. As facts are important to be remembered, I think that students have become empty boxes to be filled in with syllabuses that need to be finished by certain dates. The current education focuses too much on remembering things than encouraging students to think. The spark of creativity is just not there. More than 70% of jobs that will be in demand in the next 10 years have not even existed today. If we focus only in filling these students with facts and figures that only applies to the present day, these knowledge would become obsolete if we do not encourage creative thinking. Creative thinking allows them to grow the present knowledge to suit any future environment they will live in and any job demands that will be created.

Students should read books outside of their school syllabus in free times. Many would disagree and say ‘even the things that I am supposed to learn in my syllabus has not been finished, how can I read something else?’ This is a very common thinking and they are actually missing the point. The point of learning is not to take in as much as information and vomit it out exactly word by word on the exams paper. Knowledge has to be digested by the mind to cultivate an intelligent way of thinking. The level of creativity and critical thinking is the important thing. I define creativity as when the line of thinking is not exactly a line but a network of lines connecting an area of knowledge to another. Hence, the more variety of knowledge we acquire, the more of our ability to think creatively will flourish. Our brain is an amazing organ. Once it learns something, that something can be used in all sorts of situation. However, we fail to recognize this ability and when we learn an area of knowledge we only apply it on that same area of knowledge. 

I like to take examples in medicine as I am a medical student. Medical students learn about diseases. Yes, we need to remember all those facts about the human anatomy, the bacteriology of the etiologic agents and what’s wrong with the physiology going behind it. Then we use these facts and have them in mind when trying to diagnose a patient. We think hard to diagnose that patient and with time we successfully come out with the correct diagnosis. However, when facing a problem in life that needs to be solved in a creative way, many are unable to access the same level of creativity as they are able to do in diagnosing patients. This is because of a narrow mindset that one knowledge is only for a certain field of area. 

The same creativity in thinking when diagnosing a patient should also be used to creatively to think in a larger context and apply it to other things that may bring good effect to the greater community, like diagnosing what is wrong with the politics and economies of today. However, many students are so stuck in their own field that when a peer goes out to join forums and read books on things outside their field, like business, economics or politics, would get a skeptical look and being asked the usual question of: ''Are you going to be a doctor or what? Focus on your studies!''. The irony thing is that I have been in student organizations most of my student life, and some of the organizations has nothing to do with my field of education, but somehow I find most of the people who are very actively involved in these work are the ones who actually score in exams. How can this be possible, when we have even less time than our peers to study? Again, it's about cultivating a way of thinking. The more experience we get, the more knowledge we gain, the better our way of thinking, and the better our ability to tackle exam questions that require critical thinking. Still, many are stuck up in formal educations and insist that we must finish certain syllabus in a certain time, and for them, to finish reading these things, they must leave all other co-curricular activities that would actually develop a better way of thinking. To top it all off, I remember that even the exam papers in high schools demand that students remember word by word the facts and figures.

I read a book called ‘Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google?’ It consists of trivia can questions that needs a certain way of thinking to answer. They never asked about certain names and dates that need to be remembered and vomited out. I believe that in the future, jobs in demand will be require similar thinking skills of workers that Google today demands. If we were working toward a high-income nation, we should start to really reform our education so that every Malaysian has what it takes to work in Google-like companies.

A Huge Relief

Feels so good to be writing again. I have been away for quite a while to focus on my final semester exams. Results came out and Alhamdulillah I passed, yay! I am extremely excited and relieved this time around because so much was at stake. Firstly is because I find Paediatrics terrifying and my Professor was very strict and she didn’t like my inability to pay attention for more than 15 minutes. Secondly I haven’t been around the clinics wards and operating theatres much because I have been so busy with responsibilities in student organizations. Thirdly is because I already bought tickets to a conference in Mumbai and if I did not pass, I would have to resit the postings hence burning the tickets just like that. But again, Alhamdulillah I passed, and there is only 1 year to go until I finally become a medical doctor. Now I am rewarded with a 2 months holiday. I won’t call it a holiday though since there is actually so much to do, and I’ll start by getting this blog up and running again!

Fine Tune Criteria for Overseas Voters

This post was published in The Sun Daily, Feb 3rd 2012 (link)

With reference to ‘’No Tax, No Vote’’ (front page of The Sun Daily, Feb 1), I would like to comment on the Election Commission (EC)’s proposal to exclude overseas Malaysians who are not taxpayers from voting in parliamentary or state elections. The news, not surprisingly, has been received with mixed reactions. The main concern, as iterated by the DAP Socialist Youth chief Anthony Loke and Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih 2.0) steering committee member Maria Chin is about the students studying overseas. So far, The EC has only mentioned that the mechanisms of exclusion include the number of years a person does not pay tax to Malaysia. As far as I am sure that the EC will further discuss with the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) and include more criteria for the exclusion (such as excusing those who are not eligible to pay taxes in the first place), I do hope that its further details be disclosed as soon as possible to avoid more commotion and spreading of rumours which will ultimately stain the credibility of the EC which has just started to gain back the confidence of citizens. 

 

The mechanism that has been disclosed would not suffice. Malaysians stay overseas for a number of different reasons. We cannot judge the intentions of their stay or whether they are loyal or not to the country based on the number of years they have been away. This is especially true for students taking a course in medicine, which of all courses take the lengthiest time to graduate. Medical students studying overseas spend an average of 5 years as undergraduate students, and an average of further 4 years as postgraduate students. They might be ineligible to pay taxes in the first place when they first flew overseas, and would continue to be so as they continue with post graduate studies. Without considering this fact, the EC might dismiss these students as those who overstayed and ousted as non-patriotic, hence not allowed to vote. Some medical students have no choice to stay longer overseas because there is limited space to further their studies in Malaysia, and our country really needs more medical students to return as specialists in the health care field in order to realize our vision of becoming a high-income nation by 2020. Excluding students would make them feel side lined and discriminated against, and would eventually further perpetuate the brain drain that we are having.

I personally think that as a proposal, it is still open to suggestions and revisions and people should not over react to the disclosure by the EC Chairman. There is still time to go into the details of the proposal and give feedbacks that would hopefully be taken into considerations by the EC. Ultimately, we want all Malaysians to contribute to the country, and excluding students from voting is surely not one of the ways. 

Lutfi Fadil Lokman
Chairman,

Society of Medical Students, MMA

Talking About A Greener Kuala Lumpur

Green tidings! Malaysia has been ranked 25th out 132 countries in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 2011 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland yesterday (source). That’s the best in Asean and 3^rd in Asia-Pacific, preceded only by Japan and New Zealand. Despite our popular belief that our air is polluted and not healthy enough to breathe in, the international committee honoured us with an amazing 97.3% performance score in terms of air quality. We also scored a 95% in agriculture 95% and 90.1% in biodiversity and habitats. Other aspects evaluated include climate change, fisheries, forestry and water pollution. This amazing feat puts us in the same league as those of high scoring countries such as Germany, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Belgium.

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) was developed by Yale University and Columbia University in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

 This new benchmark announced by the WEF proved that despite the rapid transformation going on in our country, our environments are still taken care. It reiterates my point in last post ‘Talking about a Greater KL’ that modernization must never be at the expense of natural environment. I think a good way to judge a country’s environment is to look at the place where it is most likely to be polluted: the big cities. If the environment in the big cities is taken care of, most likely the whole country would follow suit. Many people don’t realize that Kuala Lumpur is indeed a green city. I have visited numerous cities around the world, and realized that most modern cities do not have much trees planted around them. They do have big parks (like the Central Park in New York City), but the greeneries are only concentrated on a piece of land, while the other parts of the city are filled with concrete. In our city, the streets are lined by trees, and even small pieces of land in roundabouts are used to landscape small gardens (and we still have pieces of land concentrated with greeneries smacked right in the city centre such as the KLCC Garden, Taman Tasik Perdana and Taman Tasik Titiwangsa).

Taman Tasik Titiwangsa

If we maintain this standard, we are well on our way to our target of being the top 20 most liveable cities by the year 2020. But however, according to WHO standards we are still falling behind. Today, the amount of green space per person in Kuala Lumpur is only 12 square metres, which is below the WHO standards of 16 square metres per person. That is why the government under the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) has made ‘Greening Greater KL/KV to Ensure Every Resident Enjoys Sufficient Green Space’ as one of its Entry Point Projects (EPP). Three key initiatives will be taken to realise 3 goals. The first is to adopt a green-focused development policy for both government and private redevelopments. Second, to employ creative landscaping methods including dense foliage tree planting, rooftop greening and vertical landscaping, and third, to integrate parks and promote outdoor events, where integrated park systems will be created to include parks of all sizes, landscaped boulevards and paths and public open spaces, where different open spaces in the city are connected through green trails. 

Many KL-ites themselves do not realize that we have green icons which stretch from Masjid Negara to Tugu Negara comprising of the Islamic Arts Museum, Planetarium Negara, Memorial Tun Abdul Razak, Panggung Anniversary, Perdana Botanical Garden, Orkid Garden, Deer Park, Bird Park, Butterfly Park and Tugu Negara. These attractions could be developed and combined into a big stretch of park with green trails connecting them to lure the green-inclined tourists. The benefits of growing a green city are infinite. For the citizens, it would improve liveability through a more comfortable living environment and creating space for healthy recreational activities. It would also create a sustainable environment by reducing inner city temperature and greenhouse gases. Economically, it would indirectly contribute to our gross national income through commercial activities and attracting more investors, especially from the west where ‘green policy’ has always been of concern and inquired when making business dealings.

All these initiatives gave a new hope to our country, but we cannot just depend on the policy makers to maintain and improve this standard of environment without ourselves as citizens, the essence of Malaysia itself to take part. Taking part doesn’t mean we have to do garden landscaping around the city or picking up all the rubbish we can find around the city (though it would be great if you can). As everything else great in the world, it all starts with small steps, like by creating awareness. Start by simply making and effort to stop open burning, stop throwing rubbish into drains and rivers and start using public transports and carpooling. Stop being so pessimistic saying ‘We will never be like this country, we will never be like that country’, because as what the world rankings has shown recently, yes we will, and maybe even better! As a fellow young citizen of Malaysia, I am going to take part in this green transformation going on in Malaysia. Are you?