Make no mistake about it: English has become the lingua fracas of the world and everyone needs to learn it well.

However, the current debate on the language switch has shown that the government cannot manage democratic debate in a modern society, as evidenced by the emotional outburst of some Umno leaders, namely Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Education Minister Musa Mohamed and his deputy, Aziz Samsudin and Umno Youth chief, Hishammudin Hussein.

We should question why they are only threatening people to accept the use of English to teach Science and Mathematics in all schools, when the real problem is the low proficiency of English among school-leavers and working adults who need encouragement and supporting facilities like television and radio educational programmes, and cheap books as well as more libraries and language centres?

How can we improve English by learning it only through Science and Mathematics which has low language-content? In this sense, Dong Jiao Zong and other opponents are right: to improve the standard of English, we need more time and resources to teach English as a subject itself.

To confine English to technical subjects shows that the promoters of English themselves are either half-hearted or half-baked, or both. Or do they fear that enabling Malaysians to read English books in non-technical subjects would dilute their nationalism or patriotism, or expose them to 'undesirable' influence?

Seen in this perspective, what Umno want is merely to churn out workers able to speak functional English to drive the economy.

Is that what they want or are they genuine in wanting the people to learn the language so that they can expose themselves to almost unlimited reading material and knowledge?

It is Umno's new dilemma. Let's see how long they and their successors can continue to keep people in tow by their arbitrary, paternalistic, authoritarian and feudalistic ways.