A few weeks ago, I was invited by a well-to-do Malay businessman and coursemate to attend a fund-raising dinner and inter-ethnic dialogue session organised by PAS.

Besides PAS president and Parliamentary Opposition Leader Fadzil Noor, other top PAS leaders who attended the function included its young secretary-general, MP Nasharudin Mat Isa, Opposition Leader of the Selangor State Assembly and MP Dr Hassan Ali and Fadzil's political secretary Dr Hatta Ramli.

After the dinner, the Chinese and Indian (including Punjabi) Malaysian guests of PAS started to throw questions in English to the young PAS leaders, and got their answers also in excellent English.

Hassan's command of the English language was, and still is, particularly impressive. It is not unreasonable to speculate that the English proficiency of Hassan is in fact higher than that of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Although the larger portion of the dialogue was conducted in English, there was no sign of protest or discontent emanating from other Malay-speaking participants who came from various socio-economic groups.

Sense of pride

On the contrary, this writer felt that there was a sense of pride among them because their young top leaders were able to posture themselves as self-confident, knowledgeable and bilingual Malaysians.

About two weeks later, Keadilan president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail hosted a dinner for journalists and writers of all languages in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Again, the major portion of the dialogue was conducted in English.

Other Keadilan Malay leaders who were there also spoke excellent English.

I am putting on public record these encounters with Malay oppositionists to destroy, to put it in Clausewitzian bluntness, the impression that only Mahathir and his supporters are good in English while Malay oppositionists are necessarily 'parochial', 'backward' and nationalistic.

The issue of language, especially the promotion of English, should not be politicised along partisan lines for short-term and opportunistic gains.

Quixotic nationalists in Umno

Just as there are many more excellent English speakers and users among the Malay oppositionists in PAS and Keadilan, there are also some obstinate and quixotic nationalists in Umno who still refuse to acknowledge the importance of the international language of political economy, science and technology.

In fact, the promotion of English and the critique of yesteryear's parochialism should not be confined to the Malay and Muslim community alone. There are also Chinese, Indian, Ibans and Kadazans in Malaysia who need to upgrade the proficiency of English in order to be competitive in the job markets, as well as to enlarge the intellectual horizon.

The opposite is equally true. For monolingual speakers and users of English in Malaysia, most of whom are Chinese and Indians, it is time they began to learn Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, Hindi, Iban, Kadazan, and other Asian tongues with pride, not shame.

Mother tongue pride

It is not a shame to know or learn mother tongues of other ethnic groups. There is also no need for anyone to hide the fact that they were once educated in Malay, Chinese, Tamil or Arabic schools.

The point is that while English is certainly and increasingly important in the age of globalisation and information revolution, the surge of enthusiasm for the language should not be turned into English chauvinism, orientalism and mental neo-colonialism that see no value at all in other languages, particularly one's own mother tongue.

In fact, mastering various mother tongues would enable us to understand better and empathise with the hopes, fears and other passions of the majority of Malaysians.

Mastering one's mother tongue also enhances the security of identity in the age of information explosion, globalisation and value confusion.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia . Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.