Tantrums and sideshows: the UEC task force farce rolls on

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Tantrums and sideshows: the UEC task force farce rolls on

Letter to the Editor

The task force chairman’s anger is understandable but profoundly misplaced

From Kua Kia Soong


The spectacle of the former Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) task force chairman throwing a public tantrum over remarks by the deputy education minister would be comical if it were not part of a tragic and cynical farce that has dragged on for decades.

Instead of posturing and lashing out at a junior minister, the chairman should be directing his ire at the real culprit: the government that has buried the task force report and refuses to disclose its findings.

The task force itself was a delay tactic from the very beginning. It was never intended to pave the way for recognition of the UEC; it was designed to postpone, deflect, and ultimately suffocate the issue. The chairman’s theatrics merely serve as a convenient sideshow that distracts from the central political truth: the Malaysian state has never intended to recognise the UEC.

A manufactured drama to mask political bad faith

Let us be blunt. Governments do not set up task forces when they already know what they intend to do; they set them up when they want to avoid doing anything at all. The UEC task force was born not out of intellectual curiosity or policy seriousness, but out of political expediency. It was a sop thrown to voters – particularly Chinese voters – who were led to believe that recognition was finally within reach.

Now, years later, the report has vanished into the bureaucratic abyss. No disclosure. No debate. No transparency. Instead, we get a chairman venting his frustrations at a deputy minister, as though this internal squabble were the real issue. It is not. The real scandal is the deliberate suppression of the task force’s findings – presumably because they do not align with the government’s racialised political agenda.


The task force was a political fig leaf

This charade is not new. As I wrote back in 2019 in “Hopes Fade in the UEC Recognition Farce”, the special committee was a waste of time and money from the outset. Its terms of reference were never clearly spelled out, its selection criteria never justified, and its methodology never disclosed. It was a fig leaf to cover political cowardice. Did the task force bother to pose these crucial questions to the government? If not, why?

If the government had any sincerity, it would have published the Malaysian Quality Assurance Agency assessment of the UEC long ago. Academic accreditation is a technical matter, not a racial or ideological one. But the state has repeatedly politicised what should be a professional evaluation, thereby weaponising education in the service of racial politics.


The government never wanted recognition

The hard truth is this: recognition of the UEC threatens the ideological architecture of race-based politics. It would open public universities, the civil service, and state institutions to MICSS graduates – an outcome that would expose the moral bankruptcy of exclusionary policies. It would also demonstrate that Malaysian identity cannot be reduced to a single language, race, or educational pathway.

Therefore, the UEC must remain in limbo – not because it lacks academic merit, but because it challenges the mythology of the “Bumiputera Agenda”. The endless task forces, committees, consultations, and now public tantrums are merely tactics to maintain that limbo.

A chairman’s anger misplaced

The former task force chairman’s anger is understandable but profoundly misplaced. His quarrel with the deputy minister is a diversion from the real question: why has the government not released the task force report? Who decided to suppress it? What were the findings? And why are Malaysians denied the right to scrutinise them?

If the report concluded that the UEC meets academic standards, the government’s refusal to publish it amounts to intellectual dishonesty. If it concluded otherwise, then let the public debate the evidence. Either way, secrecy is indefensible.


The real farce continues

The UEC saga is not merely an education policy dispute; it is a moral and political indictment of race-based governance. Each delay, each committee, each tantrum is another act in a theatre of bad faith. The victims are generations of Malaysian students denied equal access to the public institutions they helped finance.

Instead of indulging in petty squabbles, the task force chairman should demand transparency, accountability, and political courage. But that would require confronting the government’s structural racism and broken promises – something far more uncomfortable than scolding a deputy minister.

Until the report is released and recognition seriously considered, all this noise is just that: noise to mask a farce.



Kua Kia Soong is a former MP and the former director of Suaram.