Dear honorable Prime Minister,

I confess that I do not know how to write elegantly. But, I speak the truth.

Prime Minister, in your recent address to the Harvard Club of Malaysia, the vision to poise and position Malaysia as a 'knowledge-driven economy' was espoused with remarkable simplicity, sincerity and honesty.

Yet, there are some pen-pushing petty bureaucrats with such provincial zeal in your administration who are bent on doing precisely the opposite, wittingly or unwittingly. These bureaucrats are failing to realise that academics would be the vanguards in this newly envisioned economic paradigm.

As a little example, I refer to the on-going saga of the two academics in the University of Malaya. Dr Edmund Terrence Gomez and his lecturer wife who have been put in a position where they had no alternative but to resign - he to assume his secondment to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva and she to accompany him.

In one swift pull, University of Malaya is flushing out two outstanding academics. Not very long ago, we had the case of Dr Chandra Muzaffar who was unceremoniously dumped when his services were questionably terminated.

One can go on cataloguing the draining of the brains. However, the intention here is not to open another old can of worms. The intention, now, is to stop the rot so that your vision can be seen to be taking shape.

The time has come, Honorable Prime Minister, to stare at the reality unfolding and seize the moment to repair the damage. I hope the damage already inflicted upon Gomez is not irreversible. Our country can ill afford to lose yet another internationally recognised academic.

Your swift intervention, Prime Minister, would, surely, be seen as a forthright, open step towards articulating your vision of a knowledge-driven economy into a reality.

If little is done or if the matter is left to some glorious underling further down your chain of command, I fear the grand vision of positing Malaysia on an altogether new footing and platform would come across as nothing more than the mouthing of pious platitudes.

The time is nigh to show that those in power are not merely pontificating. Thus, as reiterated in your address, the traditional rules of engagement have to be changed.

I believe your kindself's intervention, in the matter, would serve as an instruction as to how the traditional rules that hitherto underpinned our economy and administration can be changed for the mutual benefit of all.

Hence, allowing Gomez and his wife their request for unpaid leave would surely reinforce the confidence harboured in you, Prime Minister.