sCambridge

I'm not a fashion follower. My exposure to sartorial performance is limited to flashes of Neelofa on Astro and Nurul Izzah on her rounds. Regardless, I still think that YB Yeo Bee Yin, picture above,  is ramping up her style to a new level. What would the fashion industry call the garb or gear she's just got herself into? I'd call it hideous. On a bad enough day it might even qualify for cross dressing. What's her statement here? I'm cool? I'm hot? I'm going to Puchong?

YB Bee Yin, you're already aware, is our Minister of Science, Climate Change, Plastic Bags and other fancy stuff. That perhaps accounts for the minimalist, carbon-free look. She did her postgraduate in engineering at University of Cambridge, the best university in the UK, if not the world. Impressive. But her fashion sense is so uninspiring that it's hard to imagine why anyone else  would want to be associated with Cambridge.

You can imagine my dismay and disbelief when the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs was recently exposed as a bogus Cambridge graduate. He and his political party were, understandably, vilified and berated nights and days on end. The clamour and commotion triggered by this scandalous discovery is piling ever more pressure on the drifting government already creaking under the weight of constant cluelessness and daily volte-faces.

The so-called Malaysia Baru or Baharu, whatever it means, isn't going to fall any time soon. It'll need more than a factory degree to bring it down. Why? Because we Malaysians are a forgiving lot. We've been brought up in a culture of chicanery and shamelessness. We're so used to frauds and ruses that a minister's misreporting of his degree and alma mater is but a blip. The issue has been blown beyond belief only because the opposition Umno and their corrupt types are short of useful ideas.

Strange as it seems, plenty of positives can be drawn from this episode,  and plenty more in due time. For starters, the fallout has upstaged and buried the Bossku burlesque, at least for a while. Nothing numbs your brain more than the sight of an ex-PM with forty-two (or is it forty-seven?) criminal charges rubbing a kapchai and feted by hordes of abhorred Mat Rempits and bought Umno gangsters. A Cambridge scam smells like fresh air.

The general Malaysians still value education. A pleasant surprise, really. Not just any education, but education from fit and proper universities with physical locations and country codes. A degree from Siberia is OK. A degree from Cyberia is not. I'm not sure what has actually happened in the unfortunate Deputy Minister's case. Did he intentionally plan to pass off his Cambridge degree as the Cambridge degree? Hard to tell, but I don't think so. Probably he didn't know what and where Cambridge really is to begin with. He thought Cambridge graduates had all studied at his Cambridge. The more I see it the more I think it's a misadventure, or an honest mistake on his part. It's a mistake, yes, but at least it's an honest one. Funny, but who really knew. But what we now know is that he didn't manage it very well when the question came, dithering, pussy-footing, and finally leaving it to PM, who was too busy with Samurai bonds.

From now on all politicians and aspiring ministers will think twice about puffing up their degrees and qualifications. Those who are already ministers have to come clean fast before they get found out. In fact, the lovable Minister of Defence has loudly proclaimed what everybody had  long suspected: he was an ITM dropout. Two ministers have, this is funny, declared that they are NOT graduates of any particular university or any university. When was the last time you heard a minister protesting his own academic achievement? The Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng's purported professional accountancy qualification has now been questioned to the very last date and  detail. Bossku ditched his kapcai and wrote to Nottingham for a copy of his scroll to prove that he is actually the genius, and not Jho Lo. 

All in all, we're in for honest-to-goodness politicians. No more quacks or charlatans from Belfords or Prestons. This can't be a bad thing. This doesn't mean that we're going to get only ministers with Cambridge (UK) degrees. Certainly not. We'd still get non-graduate ministers, but who cares as long as they are exactly what they claim to be. Better still if they can cook.

A minister is typically surrounded by a pageant of highly educated and informed advisors, inexplicably called secretaries since the imperial days. It was reported that the office of Minister of National Unity and Social Wellbeing, for example, has no less than five secretaries (all Indians) to advise the minister (an Indian). With so many advisors, who needs a degree from Cambridge in UK or anywhere?

A quick comparison among the current crop of ministers should reveal very little or no difference in performance, regardless of where they got their degrees (if any). For some fun, let's compare our Deputy Minister of International Trade, a graduate of Cambridge (UK) with our unfortunate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, a graduate of Cambridge (somewhere else). Do you notice any difference in performance? Do you notice any performance? They, like the rest in PH cabinet, are really not doing all that much. So all this bother and brouhaha about fake Cambridge is a sheer waste of time.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a graduate from a prestigious and famous and old university as a minister. On the contrary, I'm all for literate and articulate ministers. Listen to Noh Omar and you'll realize the urgency. Singapore cabinet are all Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard for a reason. A minister with a good degree is a good headstart for any government. The concern here is the overly obsession with a degree as a measure of potential competency. The culture of high performance is so entrenched in Singapore that even a UMK graduate should make a good prime minister. UMK is Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, in case you asked.

So where's all this finally leading to? Apparently something closer to home and heart. My eldest, yes, my very flesh and blood, is doing his part-time post-graduate degree at Cambridge. I'm all for good education and strong legacy. Now all this fuss and furore over fake Cambridge, maybe it's time for, quite literally, some reality check. My son's not a deputy minister, not yet, at least. But I still think it's good money to call him over and start a frank conversation. I've already compiled a list of clever questions, like, Why is this not full-time? Is the vice chancellor a Nigerian prince ? Does this  alleged Cambridge have GPS coordinates? 

I'll let you know.