The Singapore Straits Times, 18th November 2000

RELATIONS between the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the influential Chinese educationists movement, Dong Jiao Zong (DJZ) over the ""vision school'' are worsening.

And this may cost the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) Chinese votes in a Kedah by-election later this month. The ""vision school'' policy aims to put Malay, Chinese and Tamil groups in a facility-sharing arrangement. The MCA supports it while the DJZ is against it.

The stand-off between the two groups, which have been slugging it out almost daily in the Chinese vernacular papers, is said to have reached a crisis point.

The MCA is now worried that the Chinese, who make up 38 per cent of the voters in the Lunas by-election, may take their dissatisfaction to the ballot box.

To make matters worse for the ruling party, Umno is openly opposed to the DJZ stand whereas the opposition, Parti Keadilan Negara and PAS has tactically asked the government to consider the DJZ's views.

It is also learnt that the Home Ministry has asked two Chinese papers to tone down their reports.

Relations between MCA and the DJZ have never been easy but Chinese social activist Tang Ah Chai of the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall told The Straits Times that it had reached ""a new low''.

The MCA, as a component of the Barisan Nasional, supports the policy while the DJZ, which has championed the Chinese education cause since the 1940s, is dead against it.

Chinese schools have always been an emotional cultural issue among a segment of Chinese Malaysian.

The last time both groups were locked in such fierce battle was in the late 1980s when the government tried to post non-Chinese educated teachers to Chinese schools.

The policy polarised the community so much that the Internal Security Act was invoked.

Now, the vision school policy is being viewed as yet another veiled attempt by the Umno-led government to erode the character and independence of Chinese schools.

Recently, the former deputy MCA president, Datuk Lee Kim Sai, infuriated the DJZ when he gave a lengthy interview to a Malay newspaper, voicing his support for the policy and even declaring that he would send his own grandson to a vision school.

In retaliation, the DJZ now plans to ask another former MCA deputy president to talk about how he now regrets that he had not done more to defend the standing of Chinese education when he was Deputy Education Minister during the 1960s.

The MCA's position thus far has been to give the policy a chance. "We are not forcing existing schools to group together. The policy is for new schools to be set up in new residential areas. We see it as one way to build more Chinese schools,'' said an MCA politician.

But Mr Tang said: ""There have been too many broken promises on Chinese schools.''