He said it would only give ammunition to former prime minister Najib Razak and Umno propagandists and cybertroopers to project the image that Maszlee was a very mediocre minister with limited vision.
Lamenting that Maszlee had laid out plans for improving the education system but many only caught hold of his by-the-way comments on shoes, the Iskandar Puteri MP urged the minister to “quickly learn from the lessons of modern communications and focus his energies on proving that he is a better education minister than Najib himself, who held the education portfolio from 1995-2000”.
The latest example of the attacks, Lim said, was “Najib staging a ‘cat crying over a dead mouse’ act to humiliate Mazslee by pretending to laud Maszlee for his ‘far-sightedness’ in looking to change the colour of school students’ shoes and socks and suggesting that Maszlee should look into the colour of school children’s uniforms and school buildings.
“Najib even feigned outrage at the criticisms directed against Maszlee over the issue of shoes and socks, and said it was a pity that Barisan Nasional ministers had not realised the importance of the colour of shoes and socks to ‘the wholesome development of a student’.
“This is a very low blow by Najib, and Malaysians cannot but ask how much lower Najib would descend in order to distract attention from his world infamy of a global kleptocracy – the international 1MDB corruption and money-laundering scandal”.
Lim noted that Maszlee himself had today complained that his “trivial” comments about the colour of students’ socks and school were highlighted by Utusan Malaysia, while his more important point about university hospitals was ignored.
Maszlee had said: “I spoke about a trivial matter for less than a minute and Utusan reported it, even former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak was interested. I discussed important matters relating to university hospitals but none wanted to sensationalise it.”
Lim said this was not the first time that Maszlee had been given “such a shabby and deplorable treatment”, noting that the same thing had happened in a July interview with another newspaper when a small bit about shoes that Maszlee mentioned was given prominence by Malaysians and his plans for education reform were ignored.