We were all so happy when our prime minister stood up and ensured a place for the all the STPM super-achievers in our institutions of higher learning.

Happy because those valuable young minds would receive the proper training and development to become a productive human resource, to work together with the existing workforce to propel our country forward to continued success.

Hence, I felt bit concerned when two of my young relatives (straight 'A's students) - who had graduated from top British universities with LLB degrees - failed their recent CLP (Certificate of Legal Practice) examinations here.

As you may aware, an overseas-trained lawyer will not allowed to practice here without getting obtaining a CLP from the Malaysian Legal Profession Qualifying Board.

Although failing once is not a big problem, I was shocked to learn that one of them failed to pass the only paper he had to re-sit having obtained a conditional pass in November (conditional pass means passing four papers out of five and having to re-sit only the failed paper).

And what is even more astonishing is that there is no avenue for appeal against this rigid rule. Am I to understand that these two young, bright minds will be allowed to 'rot', only because they failed one supplementary paper?

Or is there something more sinister in this quota system to ensure passes? Or were the examiners overly strict?

I am writing to you to seek a proper course of redress to tackle this problem as I strongly feel that there is imbalance in our system of administration. Is it any wonder that we are experiencing a shortage of qualified people in country?

Faced with such insurmountable obstacles and narrow-mindedness, who in their right mind would take the chance to come back and build their future in our beloved country?