Cabinet orders AG to represent vernacular schools in suit

The cabinet has ordered the Attorney-General's Chambers to represent vernacular schools in a suit filed by a lawyer who is seeking to invalidate such schools through the courts.

This was confirmed by Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran (above) in a statement, written in Tamil, today. He said the suit filed by Mohd Khairul Azam Abdul Aziz would "never succeed".

"The government will ensure the continuation of Tamil and Chinese education in this country," he said.

Meanwhile, MCA president Wee Ka Siong (below) said it has also appointed a lawyer to act as an intervener in the case to defend the existence of Chinese and Tamil schools.

He said his party strongly condemned any attempt to challenge the position of Chinese and Tamil schools as the right to learn any language was protected by the constitution.

"Interestingly, the plaintiff's lawyer (Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla) enjoys a close relationship with the prime minister (Dr Mahathir Mohamad).

"(Haniff) enjoys a special standing and he can easily be construed as a representative of the prime minister," he wrote in Chinese on his Facebook page today.

Khairul had filed the suit at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Tuesday, where he is seeking a court declaration that Section 17 and 28 of the Education Act 1996 are unconstitutional.

Section 17 stipulates that the national language is the medium of instruction of all educational institutions in the national education system except at a national-type school.

Section 28 stipulates that the minister has the power to establish and maintain national and national-type schools.

According to Khairul, these two provisions were in violation of Section 152 of the Federal Constitution, which stipulates that the Malay language shall be the national language.