MCKK old boys enrol first non-Malay member
2009/12/14
KUALA LUMPUR: The perception that racism rules the daily lives of Malaysians was quashed on Saturday when a retired police officer was given the rare distinction of being the first non-Malay to be inducted as a member of the Malay College Old Boys Association (Macoba), an exclusive all-Malay alumni group.
Liew Yong Choon coached basketball at the residential school for more than 20 years and brought big successes along the way to Malay students in the Chinese-dominated sport.
Apart from voluntarily coaching the Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK) basketball team to become school champions in the late 1970s and 1980s, Liew spent a lot of his free time with the students, acting as a counsellor.
He also gave his charges tuition in English, Maths and Science and would set academic targets for them, failing which they would be suspended and not able to train with the team for several days.
Liew took pride in bringing an all-Malay basketball team to play in Chinese tournaments and made the team a crowd favourite.
He was named honorary member at the Macoba annual dinner in front of royalty and luminaries who included the Sultan Perak Sultan Azlan Shah, the Raja Muda of Perak Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, Gua Musang MP Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and former national police chief Tun Hanif Omar.
Apart from voluntarily coaching the Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK) basketball team to become school champions in the late 1970s and 1980s, Liew spent a lot of his free time with the students, acting as a counsellor.
He also gave his charges tuition in English, Maths and Science and would set academic targets for them, failing which they would be suspended and not able to train with the team for several days.
Liew took pride in bringing an all-Malay basketball team to play in Chinese tournaments and made the team a crowd favourite.
He was named honorary member at the Macoba annual dinner in front of royalty and luminaries who included the Sultan Perak Sultan Azlan Shah, the Raja Muda of Perak Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, Gua Musang MP Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and former national police chief Tun Hanif Omar.
The appointment reinforced a statement by association president Tan Sri Megat Najmuddin Megat Khas in his speech at the start of the function that the old boys of MCKK, despite their upbringing in a closed community boarding school environment, were never known to be racist nor racial fanatics.
"Why this outlook, why this cosmopolitan outlook which one would not normally associate with an enclosed one-race environment?" he asked and went on to answer it by quoting a popular belief among old boys that they were not racists because of their exposure to a multiracial teaching faculty.
However, today, Megat Najmuddin added, the teaching staff is totally Malay and the question he posed was how do MCKK students escape the embrace of racial fanaticism.
"This is a genuine concern and perhaps we have travelled along the communal paths far too far that somehow we have to come together again as 1Malaysia.
"Why this outlook, why this cosmopolitan outlook which one would not normally associate with an enclosed one-race environment?" he asked and went on to answer it by quoting a popular belief among old boys that they were not racists because of their exposure to a multiracial teaching faculty.
However, today, Megat Najmuddin added, the teaching staff is totally Malay and the question he posed was how do MCKK students escape the embrace of racial fanaticism.
"This is a genuine concern and perhaps we have travelled along the communal paths far too far that somehow we have to come together again as 1Malaysia.
1 comment:
My batchmate, Am, has something to say about Mr Liew. You might wanna check it out.
http://mckk0105.blogspot.com/2009/12/budak-koleq-and-pride.html
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