POLITICAL elites, including the Cabinet, should be honest that poor usage and command of the Malay language among Malaysians was due to their own dishonesty in using the medium of communication as a tool of polarisation instead of a unifying force.
“As you can see, such issues are only raised when polls are nearing to rile up the Malays without considering its negative implication to multi-ethnic Malaysia.
“And this has nothing to do with Bahasa Melayu, which is our collective national language,” said PKR treasurer -general Lee Chean Chung, in a statement.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob reprimanded government agencies, government-linked companies (GLC) and the private sector for prioritising the use of English over Bahasa Melayu at their events, meetings, and conferences, and on their products.
“Even at meetings held by government agencies and GLCs, English is used. In fact, it has become common for Bahasa Melayu not being used for the names of companies, housing projects and brands.
“I hope that at every conference, meeting and other related events Bahasa Melayu will be used,” Harian Metro reported him as saying after officiating this year’s Bahasa Melayu Public Speaking Competition at Dewan Sultan Iskandar, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
Empower DBP
Touching on the matter, Lee said that the failure of companies and public agencies to use Bahasa Melayu in their corporate transactions only reflected poorly on Barisan Nasional (BN), which failed to strengthen the language so that it can be used widely in the business world.
Having said that, he stressed that it was PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who had been championing the use of Bahasa Melayu since the beginning of his political career, which is now inherited by the Reformasi movement.
“Instead of pointing fingers at one another, I suggest the Government to empower Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP), especially its Language and Literature Development Department, so that it could continue translating classical pieces from various sources into Bahasa Melayu.
“Let us also instil reading habits among our youths by increasing allocation to our public libraries so that they could get more updated materials for people’s use,” the Semambu lawmaker remarked. – Nov 30, 2021.
