The Malays always have a good saying, and one of them is "Beri betis, nak peha". where in basic understanding displays the never-ending unsatisfaction of one (or more) even he/she/they have been given something beneficial. In this case, the PTPTN. The government has allocated billions to ensure Malaysians, especially the Malays, every opportunity to extend their studies, they made an issue of their student loans.
The Malays of the peninsular have always been the lucky ones: they have the government giving them almost every assitance in so many things in their lives. This is not surprising, the coming of the British brought in mass immigration of Chinese and Indians, with the former dominating the business power in the country. The Malays who retreated more and more became very deprived of so many things, and were in danger of being a minority in their own land. Even the communists, during the Emergency, found the Malays to be very annoying, always refusing to discard their religion, culture and family for the sake of communism. This usually is resolved with the communists venting their frustrations on the Malays: murder and property destruction. The British were happy enough to teach the Malays to be peons, drivers and servants. They also teach the younger Malays on how to do what their fathers did slightly better. In short, if a father is a fisherman, his son will be taught to be a slightly better fisherman while the riches of Malaya was spirited away across the ocean and the economy was dominated by the immigrants. Not surprisingly, there were more Chinese and Indians from Malaya went to universities compared to the Malays. Even the early days of Universiti Malaya in Singapore in the 1950s saw a small number of Malays.
After independence, the government continued scholarship programs on a bigger scale, although being a 3rd world country, the budget was not that much to send many students to study. The 1980s and 90s saw a drastic change where more and more Malays getting into universities, locally and internationally. MARA, Petronas, Sime Darby, JPA and even TNB were giving out student loans and scholarships to those who met the grade. With the growing numbers of local universities, such as UiTM, the future of the Malays in achieving a bright future seem to be promising.
The setting up of Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional (PTPTN) was made in 1997, during the dire financial crisis. Ironically, the body was incorporated during anwar's tenure as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Now that he's not the Finance Minister anymore, and in his campaign to spread discontent among the population of Malaysia, anwar and pakatan rakyat want to abolish the PTPTN scheme.
What I cannot figure out is what the mechanism is anwar basing himself with? True that his scheme will depend on Petronas' revenue, but how much it will hurt the other social spectrum covered by the revenue has never been satisfactorily explained. Looking at the speed of how they demolished Selangor's coffers, I dread to think of how fast pakatan's grabby hands will empty the Petronas accounts. Will that scholarship to thousands of students per semester per year take its toll on other things such as, say, benefits for the disabled (OKU)? Or will anwar remove subsidies on all controlled items in Malaysia, or worse?
But hey, I guess it should be a good move. Let's use Petronas for that purpose, and that purpose alone...yeah, right, like he would. If ever Petronas runs out of cash, there's always anwar's favorite piggy bank, the IMF, or even World Bank. Better still, why not let tiang chua reprise his job as the go-between for anwar and soros and get more cash. There's more from NED, NDI and even USAID. What's to be worried about? Anwar is already heavy in debt after all the provisions given that led to failures upon failures. What, you think the millions of RM provided to start a revolt via bersih and the pitiful demonstration today comes free of charge? Just like PTPTN, the "loans" from the foreign NGOs need to be repaid as well, and unlike PTPTN, he will not be paying them only by cash.
The absence of thousands of university students, and the attendant of less than 1% of the targeted spectators have definitely frustrated tiang chua, nurul izzah and even anwar. However, this has proven that most university students are level headed, and at the moment, making their parents extremely proud by studying. There are also reports by those who attended that they doubt that 40% of the attendants were even students. Maybe anwar should have offered a higher pay for those people, then he might have more people coming in. One guy who attended stated that the pay was dreadful this time around. Maybe pakatan is trying to reserve their sponsored funds.
What's the most important issue here? As commented a pas member, "kalau tak mau mengaji keluag la, belambak lagi orang nak masuk." (If you don't want to study, get out; there are many more who wants to get in." It's a bizarre world: when one gets a place in a university, he works hard to get the PTPTN loan. When he graduates and gets a good paying job, the loan suddenly becomes a burden. Still, the government still proceeds to assist students who are in need without fail. Maybe they fail to understand that the money they pay is meant for younger generations when their turn comes.
For anwar and his pakatan, it has always been clear that he is only eyeing the PM's chair. How he gets it, well, it's no-holds barred, even if it means having students run a riot for him. His orchestrated demonstration today, just like his previously foreign-NGO-sponsored riots, failed miserably. In fact, this demonstration failed so exceptionally bad that nurul izzah and tiang chua never had any chance to fake anything, or provoke any police to get nice juicy pictures to their western media friends.
It's strange, when I was studying abroad, I did meet students from many different countries who were studying there on student loans, either from their government, organizations or even banks. They worked hard, most even taking part time jobs to cover daily personal expenses and studied even harder. Their lifestyle were very basic, no fancy stuff, most of their equipments such as tv, pc or cd players were bought used, usually from students who graduated and were leaving. I don't know whether they were top of their classes, but I do know they graduated. I kept in touch with some of them through Facebook, and found out that they're doing very well. One of them, Steve H., from New York, owns his own investment company and he told me that he finished repaying his loan about 10 years ago. He never regretted taking the loan and stated how the experience taught him independence and the value of money. Maybe the students, if there are any, spend their time and study wisely, practice an average lifestyle and spend less time politicking, maybe they'll learn that too.
Maybe it is time for those 200 or so get back to their studies...well, if all of them are students in the first place. You can use the money paid by the demo sponsors as pocket money or something more beneficial, like buying books. Think for a while, appreciate what you have been given which so many never had the chance 30 years before. It is bad enough that so many people are labelling the demo as "an excuse to do anything but study."
Anwar has so far attacked everything there is as listed and strategized by his jewsih-sponsored NGO friends, such as racialism, the police, the army, the Muslims, the electoral system, the Monarchy, the government's credibility, Najib's personality, and so far, anwar's losing more and more ground. What's next? Who knows, he's been shooting his own foot so far. Looking at the whole scenario again, the failed Mansuh PTPTN was extremely unnecessary, but hey, the budget has already been allocated by those people behind anwar, just like the upcoming bersih 3.0.
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