Having read Lee Ban Chen's Pendedahan Gomez perlu di siasat and Josh Hong's Syabas YB! But... one has no alternative yet again but to come to the inevitable conclusion that malaysiakini and some of its contributors are as 'free and open' as the mainstream media that malaysiakini is so intent in criticising.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

For weeks we have witnessed a barrage of hysterics over Edmund Terence Gomez . Lee's article, for example, while sticking to the same flavour even showed two pictures of Gomez in the same article just so readers made no mistake as to what the article was all about - Gomez.

Gomez's so-called academic work and contributions were described in the most effusive and generous of terms but none came with the precise details of such work so that we readers might be the judge.

Readers like me would so like to compare the scholarly contributions of Gomez to, for example, Professor Ungku Aziz of the same university. The latter developed the idea of the the Pilgrims Fund Board from which millions have benefitted and billions of savings generated. The Pilgrims Fund Board of Malaysia is the envy of the Muslim world.

Equally profound and far-reaching to the ordinary rural folk is Aziz's work and contribution to cooperatives and rural development economic models which include the Felda and Felcra schemes. Other examples worth mentioning are the highly regarded academic works of Professor Ahmad Ibrahim especially in areas of Islamic jurisprudence.

Do we see articles on them? No such luck... all we have been witness to is hysterical pontificating devoid of substantive analysis.

The same with Hong on such a basic issue of whether the Malaysian Medical Council should be empowered with the authority to review and decide on the credentials of medical schools even after initial recognition.

Why sidestep this and dismiss it all as being yet just another racially motivated incident? Never mind that Chinese and Malaysian students are also studying at the Crimea State Medical University .

Neither MIC president or his secretary-general S Sothinathan nor any the flood of hysterical letters in malaysiakini ever discuss the vital issues in the interest of the students affected by the MMC ruling ie, where do we go from here, what do we do about the affected students, is there an opportunity to discuss, review and implement a series of action by the medical school towards reinstatement of the MMC recognition etc.

What gives?

Why is it every public issue in Malaysia can only be discussed and explained away in a squinted, slanted racial and racist mind-set?

Why is that so, even in malaysiakini ?