UEC recognition issue resurface
The issue of UEC recognition started to resurface in early January of 2019. However, the certificate recognition seems to be on hold again since Tun Mahathir said that racial sensitivities need to be prioritize. The UEC does not include Bahasa Malaysia and Malaysia’s history in its syllabus.
As we can see from the influencers list, the Prime Minister is dominating the narrative of UEC. He gave out 190 statements in total.
Meanwhile, Lim Kit Siang who had been fighting for UEC recognition for years only gave out 24 statements. He gave out assurance statements to the people, stating that Pakatan Harapan will fulfil its pledge of recognizing UEC before GE-15.
Besides, Education Maszlee Malik followed his previous narrative of conducting an in-depth study on UEC before recognizing it.
On the opposition side, MCA president Wee Ka Siong was active in pressuring Pakatan Harapan to fulfil their promises, pointing out UEC as one of them.
It seems like there is no point for the opposition to keep pestering the government to recognise UEC as the latter will keep coming out with the reason of in-depth study need to be done before proceeding with the recognition.
However, this will be DAP weakness since Lim Kit Siang had said that DAP will leave Pakatan Harapan if the coalition does not work towards the right path. MCA can use the argument that DAP has become a sell-out just to be in power. MCA can use this narrative to regain trust from the Chinese voters.
But we also need to bare in mind that people might want to move beyond racial politics in hope of New Malaysia.