I refer to Saad Hashim's letter Toyota salesmen and the national language . As much as he wishes to blame Umno for the predicament, it appears that he seems oblivious of the reasons for the sorry state of affairs.

When Bahasa Malaysia was introduced as the medium of instruction in secondary schools in the seventies, my parents and many like them welcomed the move. However, national schools gradually became sort of religious schools which, to many non-Malays, was a bitter pill to swallow. Even the former PM commented on this very issue once as one of the main reasons why non-Malays shunned national schools.

The majority of the moderates just stood by the sidelines without doing much to help us in anyway. So isn't it fair that they, too, share some of the blame for the increasing enrollment in vernacular schools? My children have given up inviting their Malay school-friends during festivities. Somehow, they refuse to visit for whatever reason.

These are the more salient issues that we need to tackle. It has also become quite apparent that the standard of education in national schools has deteriorated with even Malays increasingly sending their children to Chinese schools.

The most disturbing or disillusioning factor is that with Bahasa Malaysia, many fare very poorly in the job market. The Malays at least can look to the civil service for some hope but the non-Malays passport to success, and even survival, would be English as has been the case with many of my friends and their children.

Indonesia, during Suharto's rule, did enforce the language and name rule but unlike Malaysia, he made sure that religion had no place in public institutions like schools. Here, after almost 50 years of Independence, we have drifted further apart when had got together to get Independence. Somehow, we were much more closer in those days than now? Do we know why?