MCA Youth secretary-general Leong Kim Soon today rapped BN's Gerik MP Hasbullah Osman for being "insensitive" regarding mother-tongue education in Malaysia.

Hasbullah reportedly called for the government not to recognise the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC), being demanded for by the Chinese educationists.

"Our right to teach and learn our mother tongue is provided for in the federal constitution," Leong said in a statement today.

"There should be no attempt to stop us from defending our rights by making statements which contradicts what has been enshrined in the constitution."

Leong said that poor government policy, and not the Chinese community, is to blame for the lack of national unity.

"If the government treats each racial community differently in terms of fairness, then obviously our national harmony will be jeopardised," Leong added.

However, he also criticised groups which demanded that vernacular education be protected, stressing that vernacular education is already part of the National Education Blueprint.

"If we want Malaysia to become a developed high-income nation, then it is important that we nurture more talents, who are preferably bi-lingual, so as to allow them to integrate with the rest of the world.

"Besides that, it is the current trend in this era of globalisation to take up another language, thus any call to hinder the development of vernacular education will only cause our country to slide backwards," he added.