Whenever I hear that former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has been holding forth on the topic of language, I’m reminded of the quip attributed to the late, great wit Dorothy Parker about a female celebrity who was as famously multilingual as she was notoriously sexually promiscuous: “That woman speaks 18 languages and can’t say ‘no’ in any of them”.

NONE Because, though eminently capable of saying ‘no’, especially when called to recall or account for his misdeeds, as in the current royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into the Sabah ‘citizenship for votes’ scandal, Dr M for ‘mendacity’ Mahathir can’t tell the truth in any of however many languages he speaks.

In other words, however cunning a linguist he may be, he never fails to speak with a forked tongue. So that while he might seem to be perfectly fluent, all he actually utters is effluent.

As recently in relation to the now ritual annual lament at the miserable performance of Malaysia’s institutions of allegedly ‘higher’ learning on the global university rankings.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Mahathir himself the great manipulator who so moronically decreed many moons ago that English be dropped in the education system - along with every other BN regime-dominated civil institution in Malaysia - in favour of Malay?

And wasn’t he behind the politico-racist machinations that have transformed, or rather deformed, public education and every other government department into mono-racial monopolies with regime puppets installed as their (mis)managers?

And additionally, now that I come to think of it, isn’t this the same shameless monomaniac who has so long maligned meritocracy in education as in every other sphere in favour of more-easily manipulated mediocrity?

So who does he think he is to be mouthing-off about the teaching of English now? And what does he imagine that the monolingual Malaysian school-leavers that his madcap system has produced are supposed to do to remedy the deficiencies in their educations?

Study English from scratch in 1Malaysia language colleges specially licensed to BN cronies? Pardon my paranoia, but recent 1Malaysian history makes me immediately suspect that there must be a money-grubbing motive behind any apparently public-spirited move by Mahathir or any other member of this malignant regime.

And speaking of malignant, when asked following his emergence as a born-again advocate of the teaching of some university subjects in English and compulsory English lessons in schools whether his miserable Universities and University Colleges Act (AUKU) was a factor in the poor performance of Malaysian institutions, reverted to malicious mode.

‘AUKU kept students off the streets’

While typically declining to answer the question directly, according to Malaysiakini he snidely replied that at least it kept students off the streets.

universiti student auku uuca parliament protest 180808 Enlarging on this, he said that the AUKU, which he as then education minister personally arranged to be amended in 1975 to forbid student participation in political parties and trade unions, “Is very good for students who spend other people’s money to demonstrate.”

“If they tell us they want to go to university to demonstrate,” he said, in a masterful demonstration of Mahathir-speak, “we won’t give them the money. But the students said they wanted to study, but instead they stage demonstrations and that caused the drop in their academic results.”

Huh? Is there anyone out there who thinks he or she can make sense of this? Certainly it looks like English, and sounds like English, but it comes across as the usual Mahathirist gobbledygook to me.

Which leads me to the thought that, whatever other perils students face in the 1Malaysia’s public-education system, at least they can be thankful that Mahathir is confining himself to lecturing the populace, thus sparing them the pain of his actual presence on campus.

Considering his appalling record in 22 years as headmaster of Malaysia, and the two total failures he has thus far successively installed as his replacements or rather stand-ins in this role, the mind boggles at the thought of what a mess he might make as professor of any subject you can think of.

In a trice he could transform philosophy into foolosophy, psychology into psychochology, medicine into madicine, political science into political licence, engineering into revengineering, economics into wreckonomics.

Though frankly I feel there is no need to fear that he’ll ever actually be given a teaching gig at any even remotely self-respecting university, as he’s clearly losing his faculties.

Or so would seem to be the only conclusion to be drawn from his remark a week or so ago that youths aspiring to join Umno should be given remedial courses in Malay politics and the party’s ‘values’ because he strongly suspects that the minds of many, especially those who have studied overseas, may have been polluted by liberal ideas such as equality, human rights and the Western concept of justice.

Almost as preposterous

NONE This stuck me as almost as preposterous as the proposition almost simultaneously put forward by Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Razali Ibrahim ( left ), that the BN political propaganda film Tanda Putera “be made a topic of academic study by students and academicians at institutions of higher learning (IPTs).”

Lest this suggestion be mistaken for advocacy of a spirit of honest intellectual inquiry, however, he hastened to add the caveat that, though undergraduates could evaluate and criticise the film from various perspectives, “the storyline should not be questioned”.

In light - or rather darkness - of such concerted arrogance, ignorance and mental and moral idiocy, it is difficult if not impossible to imagine that Malaysian universities are likely to significantly rise in public esteem or the international rankings any time soon.

Not that I’m saying the incredible can’t ever come true. But it certainly won’t until the majority of Malaysians get smart enough to get rid their nation of increducators and dead-headucators like Mahathir and the rest of the dumb and deceptive  BN regime.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia', ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.