ANGERED by what he dubbed as “completely, irresponsibly and mischievously misconstrued and misinterpreted”, Penang’s Deputy Chief Minister II Prof Ramasamy Palanisamy had almost reacted with a police report and legal action against online news portal MalaysiaNow yesterday (March 12) for derailing the message of his opinion piece on vernacular schools.
The Perai state assemblyman’s opinion editorial which FocusM ran ‘wholesale’ as “Are vernacular schools less nationalistic?” was rehashed in a reporting style by MalaysiaNow – originally – under the headings “Now, DAP Man Attacks the Govt Schools” (English version) and “Ramasamy Kini Serang Sekolah Kebangsaan Amalkan “Discriminasi Etnik” (Malay version).
“In my piece, I never ‘attacked’ the government schools except to point out why the teaching of mother-tongue education for the non-Malays was not effective,” explained the Penang DAP’s deputy chairman.
“After the publication of the two versions, I wrote two e-mails to the editor of MalaysiaNow this morning (yesterday as on March 12) protesting about how my FB (Facebook) post was irresponsibly racialised.”
He added: “My article on the vernacular schools’ system was politicised to give a racial slant as though I am against the national system of education.”
Following this, Ramasamy said he had requested for an immediate removal of the news articles attributed to him by MalaysiaNow failing which “I will have no choice but lodge a police report before proceeding with legal action”.
“It is regretted that some publications in the country are engaging in politics of the worst kind by misconstruing and misrepresenting truth,” he pointed out on his FB post.
Thankfully, the news portal has since rectified both headlines to “DAP Man Claims ‘Ethnic Discrimination’ at National Schools” while the page for the Malay version piece can no longer be found. – March 1, 2023
