Disappointed and disheartened by PM's response to student

Two nights ago, when my granddaughter Anita Balasubramaniam came for dinner, she showed me something on her phone called TikTok. On it, a young Indian girl, only slightly younger than Anita, was asking our prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, a question at a forum in Penang.

The child in the video explained that she needed time to ask her question and proceeded to place it in context with an explanation as a commentary, as would be the right thing to do.

To my shock and horror, the prime minister cut her short several times and told her to cut to the chase. This is a young student in a hall full of people who has had the courage to prepare a question for the prime minister and ask it. What harm would it have caused for the prime minister to reciprocate with courtesy and listen to her? The forum was called a dialogue, and in my book, dialogues are discussions between people. It is not a one-way street.

However, my real source of distress and disturbance was how the prime minister lectured the child during his reply. Instead of answering the question directly and moving on, he gave a political answer that ranged from the unconstitutional social contract (the social contract he was referring to is not in the constitution) to how his political party would lose the election if the quota system were to be abolished.

My grandparents moved from Ceylon to Malaya for a better life. I grew up in Petaling Jaya, and I am proud to say that my children, their children, and I have good lives, relatively speaking. The child in the video also wants a good life, has the right to ask questions, and has the right to fair answers. Lecturing her and then assaulting her with politics opened old wounds in me and deeply hurt me to the core. I dare say the poor child is now traumatised and possibly even terrified of ever speaking in public again.

At tea this late afternoon with my fellow retirees, the hot topic was about this child. Someone mentioned an NGO called the Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia, or PAGE, which has been promoting meritocracy in educational scholarships and university entrances. The ladies were aghast that this group now defends the prime minister's cutting the child short and lecturing her, and has the gall to prescribe rules and etiquette for how to question and answer.

I may have only taught science and mathematics in a school in Section 4, Petaling Jaya, but I know enough that there is no such etiquette that questions posed in a dialogue cannot be prefaced with an explanation. For PAGE to contradict itself with what it has been championing smacks of total hypocrisy, too.

What transpired in Penang and how a liberal NGO is now defending the prime minister, whom we all thought would make a difference and be a better man, disheartened, depressed, demotivated, and demoralised me and the ladies at the tea.

Once again, we are reminded by the prime minister, no less, that we are a minority he can ignore and vilify at his whim. We will sit out this state election to teach the current administration that you cannot traumatise a young student so nonchalantly and not pay a price. The price is our vote, or lack thereof, and now we ignore you.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of MalaysiaNow.