I would first like to extend my best wishes to Dr Edmund Terrence Gomez and his family as they make brave decisions in dealing with the injustice that has been meted out to them by the myopic bureaucracy of our so-called premier university.

Gomez, you can rest assured that talent, dedication, intellectual ability and academic/professional achievement are valued almost everywhere else on this planet except in our good old Malaysia. While you may face some hardship in relocating your family should you choose to do so, there will certainly be a light at the end of this tunnel.

Although outrage is the order of the day, we should not be surprised at all by this sorry state of affairs. What we are witnessing here is the underlying national policy of the Umno-led government. While the race factor seems to be picked up on the most, a deeper reason behind this is to remove any trace of intellectual ability and critical thinking from all national institutions.

To be sure, race probably plays a role in this event as well, providing the benefit of polarisation for the BN's divide-and-rule modus operandi. However, Umno and its political lackeys in the Barisan Nasional will not survive if independent and critical thinking are allowed to flourish in the institutions that train our youth.

Political survival is the name of the game here, and to survive they are trying hard to keep the masses ignorant. But in cruel irony, while the average Malaysian is definitely intelligent and capable of critical, independent thought, the minority that are the product of this national policy seem to gravitate towards positions of policy-making and government thus perpetuating the rot.

The execution of this policy has created a vacuum, especially at the higher levels of policy- making and government and to fill this vacuum the policy dictates the celebration of mediocrity.

Such fine examples of this policy have been apparent over the last few years. For instance, consider the media hoopla and host of awards granted to individuals that performed trivial and useless feats. While the Umno-led establishment celebrates and rewards almost every other half- past six attempt at reinventing the wheel, worthwhile achievements by the likes of Gomez are commemorated by the imposition of obstacles.

For the politicians (yes, that includes the UM bureaucrats) and cabinet ministers who have been throwing around slogans and catch-phrases such as 'center of educational excellence' and 'k-economy', I hope they realise that this incident with Gomez has dealt a fatal blow to whatever visions they have been conjuring up.

And to our beloved prime minister who only recently spoke volumes on how important it is to lure back our foreign-based professionals, may you realise that the vast majority will now think twice before returning to apply their 'first-world' skills in an environment with a festering 'third-world' mentality.

As a budding academic myself, I will certainly not even consider applying my skills in Malaysia.

Malaysia Boleh? Indeed.