I wish to comment on the government's move to make English the language of knowledge in Malaysia. Although I strongly believe that it is only a political ploy by the weakened Umno party, I would like to propose that if the powers that be were serious, the first thing to do is to change the national language of Malaysia from Bahasa Melayu to English.

Although I am a Malay Muslim by birth, I have no qualms about English as the country's lingua franca . I agree with writer Dr Hassan Ahmad that any language can be a language of knowledge and that it is the culture of the people and their attitude towards learning and academic debate which determine a successful civilisation, not the language.

But to be fair, I, a Malay academic, will vote strongly for a change in the national language policy before we start doing stupid things like teaching science and mathematics in English and other subjects in Malay.

Having English as the national language has strong merits.

Firstly, we would be a truly democratic government since we are no longer biased toward any one of the ethnic groups' heritage.

Secondly, English is already the scientific and political language, why would we want to burden ourselves with building up another language of knowledge?

Thirdly, some people have remarked that the fact that Singapore has come to be where it is now has everything to do with their decision to make English their lingua franca and thus, in this we have a tried and tested model.

Umno should strive for the last mile and just go for broke. Changing the National Language Policy could well be the salvo to put Malaysia back on the track to real progress. Or does the party fear political death for trying?