Sarawak PKR chairman Baru Bian said Nazri’s remarks were an attempt at driving a wedge between the Malay-speaking population and those fluent in English, to conjure up a perceived “threat” against Malays.
“This is just another subtle attempt to politicise issues ahead of the elections and portray Barisan Nasional (BN) and Umno as the champion of the Malays,” Baru said in a statement today.
On Tuesday, Nazri said the national identity was under threat if the national language was not respected.
Quoting a Unesco report on language endangerment, Nazri said English was a threat to ethnic cultures and languages, adding that efforts must be made to stop the widespread advancement of English in Malaysia at the cost of the national language.
But Baru, the assemblyman for Ba’ Kelalan, said the statement was shocking and disappointing.
“Singling out the use of English as the threat to ethnic cultures and languages is misleading,” he said.
He said the Unesco report had also identified other factors such as military, economic, religious, cultural or educational subjugation, a community’s negative attitude towards its own language, increased migration as well as urbanisation.
Baru said the government had acknowledged the importance of English in recent years and taken steps to promote its use, including the setting up of the English Language Standards and Quality Council in 2013 and the Roadmap for English Language Education Reform under the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025.
He said Sarawak was also actively promoting the use of English in schools, by encouraging state representatives to adopt schools in their constituencies for English proficiency programmes, as well as instructing that English be spoken during school assemblies.
“It is very well for Nazri to speak up for the preservation of Bahasa Malaysia, but doing so by fingering the English Language as a bogeyman is truly short sighted.
“He should have encouraged the pursuit of excellence in both languages instead.”