At the outset, let me state that I am not an apologist for anybody, whether it is the Malaysian leader or the Singaporean leader. But I would like to see things as they are. You cannot hide from the truth; and it is painful when anybody points out the truth based on facts, not just hearsay.

It is rather strange that some of our leaders are saying that Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is a racist when we know that he is not; and that they themselves are but will definitely refuse to admit that they are. Take, for example, education. In Singapore as I understand, Malay students who excel in their studies are given scholarships right up to university level. The only criterion is that they must compete with all the rest. If they are good, they are good; and they will be provided with the finance to pursue their studies.

In other words, if they cannot compete, it is just too bad if the scholarships are not granted to them. And this is not marginalisation as I understand it. There is no such thing as 'handicaps' in education or scholarships as in the field of golf. In fact, Singaporean Chinese students often lose out to foreign students, especially to those students from China. Prizes are awarded to the top achievers and it is just too bad if Singaporean Chinese students cannot compete in studies.

Compare the situation there with the situation in Malaysia. Here, some of the top Chinese achievers cannot gain admission into courses of their choice in universities and some of them have to 'beg' for places. And for the top achievers who are poor, getting scholarships is another worry.

And let us look at the entry qualifications. Singapore uses only one yardstick, the Cambridge A-levels and some of Singaporean students are eased out by cleverer, foreign students. But here we have two standards for entry: the STPM (which takes two years) and the matriculation (which takes one year). It is clear as daylight that the two courses are vastly different, for the length of study and the rigorousness of the courses speak for themselves.

Moreover, STPM is external while matriculation is internal. Any fair-minded person, looking at the two standards here, will say that they are different. Yet, I understand all Malay students underwent only matriculation for entry to medical courses while non-Malays went through the more rigorous STPM examination.

Another point I would like to stress is that the maximum four points in the CGPA can never match a distinction in STPM. But our educationists have weighed four kilogrammes of langsat as equivalent to four kilogrammes of D24 durians! To their twisted logic, the weight is the same but they fail to realise, or refuse to realise, that the two fruits are entirely different.

Maintaining a high standard for entry into university should be a top concern if we wish to make Malaysia the hub for educational excellence. With the current poor standards, it should not surprise our educationists if none of our 17 public universities appear in the list of the top 500 global universities! This shows how far our standard of education has fallen.

Is it then surprising that thousands of our graduates are unemployed and unemployable? And the government has to spend millions of ringgit to re-train our graduates.

Suffice that I have touched on education alone. Is there marginalisation in our education? You can draw your conclusion. You can also make a comparison. We are lucky that Lee Kuan Yew did not go into more details which would have put us to shame. We must be mindful that Singapore was in Malaysia for two years; and had demanded for equality and fairness for all races.

This touched a raw nerve with our leaders hence the separation in 1965. Most of our youth of today were not even born then or were only toddlers. Lee was in the thick of things and he knows what he is talking about. Let us not play marbles with him.