Tony's points highlighted in parliament

Hot off the press - in today's Star, it was reported that MCA parliamentarian Dr. Wee Ka Siong (Ayer Hitam - Johor) raised the issue of how Malaysian public universities were wasting public dollars by participating in meaningless international trade fairs to 'exhibit' their so called 'technological innovations' and products. I've met Dr. Wee before in a wedding in Johor (before he became an MP) when I was just starting out as a political analyst (so happened that I was seated next to him in a totally random seat allocation) and I've followed his career closely ever since. He generally makes good points in regards to educational issues and kudos to him for raising this point in regards to these 'dubious' international trade fairs. But if he or any of his staff had been reading this blog, he would have realized that Tony brought up this very point as early as 2005.

Tony first critized our public universities for publishing their 'achievements' in the form of gold, silver and bronze medals won at these international exhibitions in November 2005 and subsequently followed up this post in April and Dec 2006. I think he got so sick of it that he stopped blogging about it.

I think bloggers have been taking a bad beating in some newspapers of late but the points highlighted by Dr. Wee illustrate the importance of blogs such as this one. We have an electronic trail which can be traced so that we can go back in time to see when these issues were first highlighted. It can be a useful tool for policy makers, journalists as well as researchers who are interested in educational issues in Malaysia to peruse.

Hopefully this kind of press will put a stop to our taxpayers money being spent or more specifically wasted at these international trade fairs. Kudos to Tony for first highlighting this!