Ruling and opposition parties should work together, says Wee

PETALING JAYA: The ruling and the opposition parties should not always be against each other but should work together instead, says MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong.

“I thank PKR Tebrau MP Steven Choong for his righteousness to speak up.

“I hope DAP MPs, especially the ministers and deputy ministers, can learn from Choong and Prof Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi.

“They should pluck up the courage and speak up. Don’t remain silent,” he said in a Facebook post yesterday.

Dr Wee was responding to Choong’s commentary published in Sin Chew Daily on Tuesday.

Choong urged both parties (Finance Minister and MCA) to discuss the TAR UC issue instead of engaging in a war of words in the media.

He added that many of his friends told him privately that they are beginning to feel disappointed with the new government.

“They said that the Finance Minister, even if he had no faith in MCA, should not have saddled the Chinese community with a new burden when the long-standing issue of quota system to enrol in public university had yet to be solved,” he said.

Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng axed the RM30mil matching grant for TAR UC in Budget 2019.

The Finance Ministry only allocated a mere RM5.5mil as development fund for TAR UC.

Choong said there were suggestions that the Finance Ministry put MCA under scrutiny if the Finance Minister was worried about fund abuse.

Meanwhile, Tajuddin, a professor of architecture in a private university, recently wrote that the Finance Ministry should reconsider its decision to drastically reduce financial support for TAR UC.

He stressed that education must be affordable to all Malaysians, regardless of race, to help build a nation of tolerant, accepting and diverse communities.

Separately, in a Facebook post on Friday, Dr Wee thanked Datuk Kum Boo, who recently passed away, for his contribution to TAR UC and the education sector.

“During 1969 to 1975, Kum, who was a director at the Education Department, approved five classrooms of several schools in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya to be the temporary classrooms for TAR UC.

“At the time, TAR UC did not have its own campus,” he said.

Kum was the head the school of technology in Tunku Abdul Rahman College, now TAR UC.

They should pluck up the courage and speak up. Don’t remain silent.

Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong