FORMER prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak lashed out at DAP MP Tony Pua for calling for the Foon Yew High School board of governors to be sacked for inviting the former to attend a function.
“If you have a problem with me, come after me. Don’t go after school directors who have done a good job.
“This is exactly the type of vengeance and intimidation politics of an arrogant DAP leader, that the rakyat including the Chinese community, is increasingly turned off by,” he said, in a Facebook post.
Yesterday, Pua called for Foon Yew school board to be removed for allowing Najib to visit the school’s campus in Seri Alam, Johor. The latter had delivered a speech urging the Chinese community to support Barisan Nasional (BN) in the upcoming Johor state election.
“The school board of governors are setting the worst possible example for our children, telling them in no uncertain terms that it is okay to cheat, lie, steal, abuse power and bully the helpless, as long as you are rich and powerful.
“These governors should all be sacked for a complete lack of integrity, for failing to set an upright example for our young and innocent children and destroying the moral fibre of our society.
“Education has always been at the heart of the Chinese community but if this is the direction the school governors are taking our schools, then we are on a path to a slow but certain decay and malaise in our culture, our righteousness, dignity and honour,” Malaysiakini reported him a saying yesterday.
It is to note that it was Najib who approved for the school to be established in 2013 while serving as prime minister.
It was revealed later that Najib had overruled his then deputy, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s decision who had refused to grant permission for the school’s construction.
DAP is frustrated
Najib had also approved the school’s Kulai campus, when he was serving as the education minister in 1999.
Hurling brickbats at Pua, Najib said the former had forgotten that the school had produced many high-achieving Malaysians and it was malicious of him to single out the school’s management just because they chose him as a speaker.
“Who is he to judge the integrity of the board who has grown the high school into Malaysia’s largest Chinese independent high school with a 71-year history?
“It just smacks of DAP’s long-held frustrations at being unable to have their own people appointed to the board of one of Malaysia’s most revered institutions of learning with three campuses in Johor,” he mentioned.
On the Seri Alam school, Najib said he wanted to check on how the school was doing after signing its approval years back and was touched by the reception he received there.
“Is it wrong for me to be asked to share a few words with their faculty and students and see how the school is doing after its opening last year?” the Pekan MP queried. – March 1, 2022.
Main photo credit: Malaysiakini
