Mustapha should prove his mettle in his second test as  Higher Education Minister by taking clear and unequiovocal stand denouncing  the rowdy and gangsterish  conduct of UPM students and student  leaders captured by  the videoclip circulating on the Internet

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Friday) It is five days since the rowdy and gangsterish  conduct of some 50 “pro-establishment” students led by student council leaders taking the law into their own hands in manhandling seven students who are members of an organization  perceived to be “anti-establishment” at University Putra Malaysia (UPM) on Monday and 10 days since an earlier similar incident in the university.

But there has been thunderous silence whether from UPM Vice Chancellor Prof Dr. Nik Mustapha R Abdullah or the Higher Education Minister, Datuk Mustapha Mohamad at such gross student indiscipline bordering on mob rule in a public university.

Mustapha should prove his mettle  in his second test as Higher Education Minister by taking clear and unequivocal stand denouncing  the rowdy and gangsterish  conduct of UPM students and student  leaders as there is no way such incidents could be hushed up, as they have been captured  by the videoclip on the incident which is being circulated on the Internet.

Mustapha should realize that such rowdy and gangsterish conduct of students and student council leaders in public universities are detrimental to efforts to restore public confidence, both national and international, in Malaysian universities as centres of academic excellence.

We do not want the disgraceful incident of rowdy and gangsterish conduct of  a group of UPM students and student council leaders to become or be regarded as a racial issue, and this is where Mustapha must condemn it as an act of unacceptable student indiscipline and misconduct which has  no place in any public university and which has nothing to do with race whatsoever.

Mustapha must demonstrate that he will not practice double standards in his efforts to make up lost ground lost by public universities in order to restore the former high international standing of Malaysian tertiary institutions.

Firm and decisive action must be taken by Mustapha to demonstrate that the two UPM debacles – over the tendentious and divisive Ethnic Relations guidebook and rowdy and gangsterism conduct of a group of UPM students and student council leaders – do not reflect a very sick UPM, whether intellectually, morally or spiritually.

(21/07/2006)