According to Dissatisfied's letter Mother tongue school promise is double-talk (March 20), it appears to have been forgotten, as usual, that the long-term strategy of the Malaysian government, as outlined in the National Education Report, is to phase out all vernacular schools.

Getting rid of the vernacular schools, among the last vestiges of the British Empire, is the unfinished sacred task of the powers that be who love nothing better than taking great delight at the misery of others.

Meanwhile, many indulge in the wishful thinking that English medium schools, however, may be allowed a comeback, even if under tightly-controlled conditions, given the advent of the Internet and globalisation. Besides, the British neo-colonialist threat has virtually dissipated with the implementation of the New Economic Policy. English schools were converted into national schools, which have since emerged as sacred cows.

The government couldn't care less about Tamil schools, that is, whether they stay or go. But since they are apparently determined to phase out Chinese schools, one way or other, they would have to strangle to death Tamil schools as well in order to camouflage the hidden agenda which discounts the possibility of the Chinese community generally having any intelligence at all.

The government is now promising aid to Tamil schools in order to keep up appearances and ensure that Chinese schools as well, can somehow be lured into a similar situation where they will be at the mercy of the government and the politicians. Tamil schools will probably receive at least some of the promised government aid, despite perennial acts of sabotage by petty bureaucrats, but not of course without constant political intervention and no doubt only after much whining, moaning and begging, cringing and groveling by MIC leaders. Any aid received in this manner will be on a dragged out basis, in bits and pieces, timed to coincide with election campaigns and pledges to be made good only after the polls.

The character of Chinese schools is linked with Chinese value systems, clan associations and Chinese control of a significant segment of the Malaysian economy. The death of the Chinese character will mean the eventual demise of the Chinese as a community in Malaysia. Business dealings within the Chinese Malaysian economy are conducted solely in Mandarin and this ensures that Others will find it virtually impossible to penetrate a large segment of the Malaysian economy. It's for this reason that many non-Chinese send their children to Chinese schools.

The Chinese Malaysian economy is the proverbial Goose that lays the golden eggs unlike the general Malaysian economy which lurches from one debt-ridden crisis to another while the Argentinean David Copperfield aspirants who run the Finance Ministry and Bank Negara, among others, postpone the inevitable day of reckoning at the expense of the future and generations unborn.

Promises by politicians, even the benign and demigods, on any issue are not only worse than worthless but indeed supreme insults to the intelligence of the common man. What we need is the rule of law, not the rule of men or rule by law. The failure of the government to implement the solemnly promised and long-awaited monthly wages for estate workers should tell us all something. The issue would no doubt be dredged up during the next polls and even more promises will be made and moronically swallowed hook, line and sinker by estate workers and MIC leaders.

Malaysian children will continue to be the unfortunate victims as long as politicians continue to play politics with education. The refusal by local universities to accept the Unified Examination Certificate as an entry qualification is a case in point. It's not Umno alone, or PAS for that matter, that plays politics with education. The MIC, too, is playing politics with Tamil education. The result can be seen in the appalling standards and performance of Indian students and their increasing transmigration from the estates to the ghettoes of urban Malaysia to enter a vicious cycle of ignorance, poverty, disease, violence and petty crime.

If MIC leaders appear to be doing nothing, its because any initiative would first be considered in terms of how it affects them personally and the ruling elite that has placed a noose through their nostrils. So, like a thousand Neros, they play the harp while Rome burns.

Something in us, the demon in Malaysian politics, drives us on and we tread that path from generation to generation. We need to eventually exorcise these demons so that we can finally join the community of civilised nations.