The Prime Minister To Make An "Important Speech"!!!

The Oxford and Cambridge Society of Malaysia, like the equally fatuous Harvard Society of Malaysia, stands on its dignity and invites none but heads of state or government to address it. The Prime Minister, who runs out of audience to make "important speeches" would address the Oxbridge alumni on Thursday, 30 August 01. Where would the talk be? The New Straits Times (August 25) does not say. What would he talk about? The New Straits Times does not say, but teases you along coyly to say it would "touch on matters of national importance."

Obviously there is a problem: otherwise, the report would not have invited all members of the society to the lunch and to emphasise that corporate tables are available. When retired civil servants and diplomats wanted to honour the Prime Minister, they had a tough task to fill the tables. The Prime Minister's Office had to twist arms to fill the tables, and the riot act read to insist that those who buy tickets or reserve tables should not send their office boys to replace them. The Oxbridge lunch seems to fit into this pattern.

It is the height of discourtesy to expect one to attend a lecture, even if by the Prime Minister, on a subject yet unknown. How could the Oxford and Cambridge Society invite him to the lecture without finding out what he would speak on? Once it would not have mattered. Now it would. Many would consciously not turn up if he is the speaker. That has nothing to do with the Society but with the fissures within Malay Society. He is at odds with it, and Malays, some in the highest rung of Malaysian social set, civil service and government, distance themselves away from him.

Usually, he and the other speakers can be relied upon to restate the mundane realities of life, which then is splashed over the mainstream newspapers. The strict civil service heirarchial rules apply: for years, the chairman of the Harvard Society was the Chief Secretary to the Government since he did study at government expense at Harvard. But the Oxbridge and Harvard Societies are social clubs to enable its members to hobnob with government officials and get business and contracts where possible. They have no other role, other than listen to the tired speeches of its "illustrious" alumno who have become prime ministers or heads of government. You pay a packet to be lectured to and see office bearers fawning over the honoured speaker of the day.

I have a right to be a member of the Harvard Society but am not; I dropped out when it was made clear, when it was formed and I was on its drafting committee of its rules, that only full time undergraduates and graduates were allowed to hold office. I did not qualify; I had only spent a year as a Nieman Fellow in Journalism, did not read for a degree or postgraduate qualifiaction. Like all rules in Bolehland, this was changed to allow anyone who had spent time at Harvard to hold office. The Oxbridge is run on tighter lines, but the worldview is the same. The societies are there to give a self-importance to its alumni.

One would have thought that the Universiti Malaya and the other universities in Malaysia would have more important and more active alumni bodies, but they do not. The government would give it no respect. The Prime Minister is not likely to "touch on matters of national importance", indeed he would not, in present circumstances, be welcome to an alumni dinner. Societies like the alumni of Oxbridge and Harvard have pride of place in "national" life only because it has "important" Malaysians on its list of office bearers, and those like the Prime Minister would deign to talk to them because his senior officers in his department and others in his government hold office.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my