The Umno elections loom ominously in a still hazy horizon but the over-the-top campaigning has been upped to DEFCON 2, at least in the Dewan Rakyat where unsurprisingly, two Umno MPs lurched themselves further into the abscess of notoriety. First, the incorrigible Datuk Tajuddin Rahman (BN-Pasir Salak) launched a ludicrous racial slur and dumb epithet against his brethren in the Opposition last week but incredibly escaped official censure. Second, the soft-spoken Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir’s (BN-Jerlun) hardboiled proposal for a single education system to promote unity yesterday that understandably whipped up a firestorm of discontentment.

Tajuddin has a keen eye on winning one of the 25 Umno supreme council seats while Mukhriz prowls for a bigger prize – his ascendency in Umno Youth as its new chief, provided he can weather the barnstorming challenges of a hurricane called Khairy Jamaludin, who may strongly feel that the prize is his by virtue of being the second in command, and a cyclone called Datuk Seri Khir Toyo, the undisputed underdog with axes to grind.

Tajuddin’s scatological outbursts didn’t merit a reprimand from the Deputy Speaker despite the amplified outrage of Tajuddin’s two targets, M. Kulasegaran (DAP-Ipoh Barat) and Azmin Ali (PKR-Gombak). Tajuddin could still retain his smug disposition after the Deputy Speaker ruled that once the Pasir Salak man withdrew his utterances, everything was all right. That didn’t go down well with the resentful Oppositionists who argued for Tajuddin to at least face a suspension similar to Gobind Singh Deo’s punishment for antagonising the Deputy Speaker.

The two Opposition men were verbally molested after they had endorsed the motion to dock Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein's salary by RM10 for what they claimed are his unfulfilled promises to provide aid for vernacular schools. But Lim Kit Siang (DAP- Ipoh Timor) had other ideas – even if the Deputy Speaker had let Tajuddin off the hook, he pursued a course of action based on a bipartisan approach to at least punish the trigger-happy MP from Perak for unparliamentary conduct.

"Let us rise above our political differences and take a common stand against Tajuddin's unacceptable behaviour to ensure unparliamentary language are not used in the House," was how Kit elucidated his outrage at a Press conference in the Parliament lobby yesterday.
On the parallel side, Mukhriz may calculate that his proposition to streamline the national school system had a streak of unenviable candour, except for its incendiary national repercussion that jolted reactions from all conceivable quarters of the political landscape.

But just as he had obstinately insisted in blaming the Umno leadership for the beating the party received in the March 8 general election, Mukhriz is not backing down from his latest overture, which may be intended to raise further his profile against his two persevering challengers.

In a nutshell, Mukhriz is recommending that vernacular schools, in its current format, be integrated into the national school system so that pupils can integrate and interact better besides being taught in Bahasa Malaysia on all subjects except Mathematics and Science. He further proposed that it might be a good idea to compel Chinese and Indian students to learn their mother tongues while for Malays and others, the option is to take up any of the languages.

Mukhriz’s rationale for his sudden but unoriginal brainwave? Almost 99 per cent of the countries in the world have only one education system, he asseverated, and under one system, he reasoned that spirit of unity and integrity could be instilled at a young age which can help avoid sensitive and racial issues cropping up in the future.

Yet, Mukhriz may have unwittingly opened a Pandora’s Box of negative public opinion, starting with the MCA which dismissed the idea while proclaiming that the current education system had worked well in the last 50 years. The MCA could not help but mocked Mukhriz’s play as a political ploy, as insinuated by MCA president Ong Tee Keat who sees Mukhriz as one of many who had repeated the same decades-old polemics, simply because of its expediency as an Umno election platform.

Kit said it strongest, arguing that Mukhriz committed sedition by touching on one of four sensitive issues entrenched in the Federal Constitution that carries no parliamentary immunity during debates. But let’s remind Kit that Mukhriz did not utter his proposal inside the House. Reporters who covered him at the parliament lobby yesterday can attest to this, so Kit can vigorously pursue Mukhriz as another of his favourite muckraking offensives in demanding the censure or jailing of one Barisan Nasional politician or another.

For polemic’s sake, Mukhriz may have spoken out loud the contemporary thinking of many politicians and educationists worried about the state of Malaysian education and its seemingly polarising effects but, in the grander scheme of things, you have to question his dubious timing in raising the issue now, which may be advantageous to his political manoeuvres, but bad for the national interest as it hurtles right down the middle of the hurricane of too many divisive events at play now.