KUALA LUMPUR: After engineering the downfall of his handpicked successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi with surgical precision, is former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad now training his scalpel on his protege Najib Tun Razak's jugular?
Those attending a function here this morning must have felt that this was the case based on the 84-year-old's scathing remarks.
The central topic was education, and the medical doctor-turned-politician, suggested that Najib's government should be given the boot if did not convince parents that education was one of its topmost priorities.
“You can change the government if you want to, or if you don’t want to change the government, you can change the person. But telling me (the problem), a former prime minister, is not going to help. You must tell the (current) prime minister,” he said.
Mahathir, who had delivered a talk on the impact of technology on higher education, was responding to a parent campaigning for the government to reinstate the policy of teaching Science and Maths in English.
The Najib government cancelled the policy, which was Mahathir's brainchild, following pressure from certain quarters who considered it as an attempt to phase out the prominence of vernacular schools.
'Lack of political will'
However, Mahathir said the mastery of the English language was not given its due emphasis by the current government, and blamed this on the lack of political will from the top leadership.
"If I am prime minister, of course I can do this...the government must change its mindset," he said.
The former premier also lambasted the present administration over its conflicting position on innovation, which was meant to be the primary theme in Najib's New Economic Model.
"On one hand, the government is saying that we must innovate, but when results are produced, they don’t want to use them," he said, adding that the government must believe in the innovation of its citizens.
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