So, it takes a cabinet minister of a country to straighten out a relatively benign personnel matter within a supposedly independent premier higher education institution in Malaysia. I am just dumbfounded at sheer folly and unnecessary mess that the Edmund Terence Gomez issue has revealed.

I am dumbfounded at the sheer arrogance and shortsightedness of Universiti Malaya's vice-chancellor. He appears to be no more than a paper pusher, following to the very letter the policies and procedures of the institution.

If one is a vice-chancellor and cannot see beyond the fences of the campus, why have him in the first place? For goodness sake, can't we hire someone with more credibility and competence? So much for wanting to make Malaysia a hub for higher education.

And why is it that mundane and routine stuff has to be decided upon by the prime minister or a cabinet minister? What kind of quality professionals do we really have in our institutions of higher learning? Gomez case should not have gone up to the ministerial level. Various governance apparatus within the campus should have addressed the matter well ahead of time.

I think it is about time that the government seriously look at the quality of the administrators and faculty members at various universities. The mediocrity has to stop.

We trust 'foreign' scholars to be rectors at our universities but do not trust our own competent and credible citizens to hold the same position simply because they were born into a different race. What a shame. As a citizen, I am disillusioned at the current state of affairs in my country.