BTN should have been disbanded Part 1

BTN (Biro Tata Negara) has been the hottest of all hot topics of the week and months. This issue has been stretched too far and has now staged an ostentatious confrontation and hostilities between Mahathir and his former Cabinet Member Nazri Aziz who is still a member in the current Cabinet lineup.

Over this issue, it reflects the real and true line of divide within the leadership. There are always two sides of a coin. Throwing punches from the either side of the deep divide is still going on and it is going to contribute greatly in the process administrative disaster in the government.

The latest of the punches was when Nazri went further by calling Mahathir the Father of Racist while he was at the helm of power for 22 year. Mahathir replied by asking Nazri to leave UMNO as UMNO is really a racist party; just like MCA and MIC, they are all racist parties.

Now, where does Nazri stand? He has to tell everyone off his position. If he is not racist, why is he still in UMNO? At least Dr Mahathir is honest enough to admit that he is a member of one of the most racist parties that is UMNO.

DAP is multi-racial but it is a Chinese dominated party and so do GERAKAN. Like UMNO, PAS is a Malay dominated party with Islamic flavor.

I am not interested to take any personal affiliation between Mahathir and Nazri as both were together in enjoying the fruits of existence of BTN. I am not impressed by both. In actuality they are in one set.

Now let us be aware of what BTN is and why this department was set up. Once we understand the original purposes of its existence and do a bit of study on how the department implements its course and curriculum contents we should see why BTN becomes a big and unrestrained issue of the day.

That is why I fail to understand why Nazri is so rude and uncivil in ridiculing Mahathir only now as the curriculum of BTN has been like what is now since its inception.

BUT to many others who know Nazri fairly well, say that Nazri is not serious in any name calling on Mahathir.

He is just making a personal political stunt to impress and amuse Najib and to tell the confused Prime Minister that he is around still brave and strong to defend him in any revolting challenges against him (Najib) in the future.

He chose to rebuke Mahathir as Mahathir is no more in power but repeatedly giving uncalled for comments on the present government.

To be precise, Nazri is like the Sanusi of Mahahir’s administration.

BTN was formed with noble intentions. After Tun Abdul Razak took over from The Tunku after the '69 incident when New Economic Policy (NEP) was launched with the only intention of creating a national unity among Malaysian through multi-prong strategies among which was to uplift the Malays and the Bumiputra economic cake and so on and so forth (I have written at length in my early articles).

I personally participated in the courses and in those few courses that that I attended the content of the courses were proper.

The courses moderators had clear intentions and they did their job with full integrity and sincerity and the participants were taking and absorbing the courses with pride at the highest level.

BTN was purely in its intentions and was all for the support of the NEP. It was meant to train the Malays how to cope with the needs of the race to be of valuable of its existence:-

1. To love the nation and its Constitutions.
2. To tell the participants the importance of unity within the Malays in order to enhance the race to be a race this earns recognitions from other races. Parallel to that the participants were encouraged to co-exist in harmony with other races that are part and parcel of our Malaysian society.
3. To train and guide the government servants to responsible implementers in order to achieve what NEP as planned.
4. To prepare overseas bound student their mental alertness that they were sent abroad to study to return home as responsible citizen and to play viable role in the nation building. While studying abroad BTN trained them to behave and study hard and achieve excellence in life.

There were few other noble motives which I personally consider as a very good curriculum just fit for the Malays to achieve competitiveness with other brothers from other races.

To my simple mind it does not have any detrimental element and it was all done for the sake of expediting process of achieving national unity.

BTN believes that the earlier the Malays changed to be abreast with the need of time the earlier we can see what we intent to achieve would be realized; that is National Unity.

BUT human is human and politics is politics. BTN slowly but surely was made used by weak and irresponsible leaders within UMNO and the new guys in BTN were polluted by some leaders and this agency changed and never came back to why it was set up.

I have been writing endlessly that for a nation to survive well no leaders with personal problems and weaknesses should even have any intention to be leaders of this grand nation.

We have proven to the world that weak and ill-intended leaders would only bring disaster to the nation and contributes greatly to corruption and the erosion of institutions like judiciary and other enforcement institutions like what we are facing now.

In this issue BTN was greatly responsible for the split among leaders within UMNO. BUT BTN will never admit it. It’s okay to me as long as they admit it quietly to themselves and hope they would live in repentance while waiting for the one way ticket to the next world.

No one can be trusted anymore and in this situation, it is only the unethical and distorted politicking that makes leaders survive…just for their personal selves and nothing for the people and the nation.

So sorry to ask; why is Nazri still there…I mean in the Cabinet?

I shall write this part of this article in a day or two. Just wait.


Thanks…………………………………………………………………………….Aspan Alias