The practice of Barisan Nasional ministers of exhorting Malaysians to study locally while sending their own children abroad has been going on for over 30 years and was debated heavily even during my school years - nothing new here.

And my own brother was denied a loan (not a scholarship, mind you) by a state-run institution when he was offered a place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but was offered assurance of funding if he chose Universiti Teknologi Malaysia instead!

As for Anwar Ibrahim, I will hold my judgment until after I have seen some results from the man. I remember very distinctly that Anwar was single-handedly responsible for the over-zealous relegation of English to pariah status.

If I recall, he stated that '... over 160 million people speak Bahasa' in obvious reference to the Indonesian archipelago's inhabitants shoring up the Malaysian base. I remember the many dissenting voices who argued with him to proceed in a less aggressive way.

Anwar would have none of that and instituted his will on the students of Malaysia. In short, he was responsible for an entire generation of the Malaysian student population being incompetent in English. I hope he has learned something from his actions.

There is nothing wrong with being proud of Bahasa Malaysia nor its implementation as the principal medium of instruction in schools. Just don't do it at the complete expense of the English.

No matter where you go in this world, the first foreign language of choice is English. We, as a developing economy (unlike Japan or other advanced nations), cannot afford to be sentimental and have to put practical realities in perspective.

This begins to become all the more apparent when you consider the globalisation of the world economy. It boggles my mind, every time I visit Malaysia, that our leaders are oblivious to the massive change that has occurred in world trading patterns and the pace of these changes.

The years of protectionist policies coupled with high oil prices (and other natural resource export wealth) have bred an atmosphere of complacence, lack of innovation or entrepreneurship and general apathy in the administration.

Malaysia has, thus far, been protected from the real effects of a truly competitive marketplace But these effects are coming and even the government will not be able to stop them.

From my vantage point as a manager of an international company in the US, where we outsource a lot of IT and some customer service (call centres) work, we look toward English fluency (after political stability and general infrastructure) within the general populace of a country before we commit investment.

Not many Malaysians have seen the impact of the outsourcing phenomenon on a country but I can assure you that we are talking very serious investment here and equally tremendous spin-offs as a result of that kind of investment.

I believe, we have missed a tremendous opportunity in cashing in on the outsourcing bonanza due, in no small measure, on the continued 'dumbing down' of the English language. Malaysia has the necessary infrastructure (and economic advantage over Singapore) but it lacks an education base that is in English to attract foreign investment in its intellectual capital .

It took 25 years of failed experiments (anyone remember the 'Three R's' experiment?) for Mahathir and Anwar to finally re-institute English back into the education system but without any mention of failures or lessons learned.

As with everything Barisan Nasional, there was no grand strategy, the associated planning to put that strategy into action nor the obligatory accountability components.

As for the current national education policy, it really frustrates me to see a country which held one of the highest education standards in the whole world prostitute the virtues (integrity, fairness, objectivity, etc) that got it those standards for an inferior, race-based education base.

A system where the prime objective is to turn out as many bumiputera graduates as possible with scant regard to quality or the requirements of the marketplace.

What the government needs to do is to appoint a commission to inquire into the current state of education in the country. The commission should comprise subject-matter experts drawn from educationists in the ministry, schools, education councils, industry (hiring departments) with some representation of the general populace through identified forums and other means.

The commission could be tiered to reflect the three main stages - primary, secondary and tertiary education. The commission should have independence from any political or religious group, have enough integrity to investigate and report its findings fairly and accurately. It absolutely cannot be race-based (BN take note) nor have, among its membership, individuals who 'know what's best for the country'.

The commission's findings should be compared to the requirements of the current and future environment with industry experts being consulted extensively. As a further step in this phase of the process, it is important to benchmark against excellent educational institutions both local and foreign.

This will bring us to the 'gap analysis' phase where shortcomings are identified and brainstorming can begin on fixes. The fixes or ideas will have to be prioritised and an action plan to bridge the gaps will be drawn up.

Next, in the execution phase, the government will have to appoint the correct (qualified) individuals to implement the actions with the necessary checks and controls in place together with accountability.

The action plan can then be implemented with provisions made for mid-course corrections (periodic checks against expectations) and fine tuning. Going forward, every major milestone (period in time since implementation), will be reviewed to see if the results correspond to the predictions and if not, necessary corrective action is taken before proceeding to the next step.

This is a huge effort but if it is done very objectively and (in the case of the BN) sincerely with the intent of developing the best education system practical, then the results will pay for itself many times over.

I believe that a window of opportunity exists right now for the government to seize the moment to redress its past intransigence and vacillation and to justify the faith the rakyat had put into it in the recent elections.

The current crop of BN leaders have been weaned on years of bounty and have been mollycoddled by protectionist policies that has left them completely out of touch with what's happening outside the country.

If only they know what our competition is doing (in terms of laying the groundwork for advancement) and what is happening in the global competitive arena, they would not be this complacent.