Senator Alan Ling
MIRI: Senator Alan Ling has called on the Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia (Hua Zhong) to continue with its fight for government’s recognition of the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC).
Ling said the association must continue to speak on the issue without fear or favour, regardless of who is in the government because at the end of the day, they are fighting for their community’s interests.
“A community leader shall be apolitical in discharging his or her community responsibility, and to speak facts and the right things without personal interest or favourism, give credit when it is due and have the guts to criticise when the government is not being fair, only then you will gain the respect from the community.
“Remember, you are elected to lead and fight for the community’s interest, not for your own gains or as a spokesperson for any political party or leaders,” he said when asked to comment on a statement issued by Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) that the prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin did not say the government would recognise UEC.
The PMO statement was issued following news reports quoting Hua Zhong as saying that Muhyiddin had expressed his hope that one day, the government would recognise the UEC in a meeting held between the two on July 16.
Ling noted that it saddened him that certain people were equating the community leaders as the mouthpiece for the ruling government when in fact they should not take sides but to speak for the larger interest of the community that they are representing.
In regards to the news reports where Hua Zhong claimed that the PM had expressed his hope that one day the government would recognise the UEC, Ling said by right, Hua Zhong should not have unilaterally issued its own statement to speak on behalf of the PM.
He added that it was a blatant breach of conventional protocol for a bilateral meet-up to have a one-sided statement attempting to sum up the whole discussion or any conclusion reached.
Thus, he opined that despite Hua Zhong’s duty to pursue the UEC issue, it must be done pragmatically and made known its progress to the people if there is a real breakthrough in its recognition progress.