PERGERAKAN Tenaga Akademik Malaysia (Gerak) is fully supportive of the Minister of Education in his attempts to remove politically-backed deadweights and bring order and excellent leadership back into Malaysia’s higher education sector.

In so doing, Gerak strongly condemns the posturing and shameless appeals for help to old political party allies by those asked to leave.

The ongoing attempts by the VC in Sabah to remain, despite being given notice, is one such example. 

In this regard, Gerak is well aware of previous cases of others who used powerful backers to swing decisions back in their favour.

This sick, feudal culture must stop if Malaysian academia is to move forward from the sad state it is in now.

In the case of UMS, there have been strong evidence-backed complaints and allegations made by members of staff.

The most visual and horrific has been the parang attack on the office door of one academic by a senior university official, and the failure of the top official to punish his counterpart or bring the matter under control.

Then there was the widely discussed – but evidently hushed up and kept from away from the rest of the world – sexual assault of a student by one of the university security staff with connections in high places.

On top of which have been the accusations of nepotism, with numerous senior staff having their relatives being appointed to administrative positions.

Gerak is aware that, at present, there doesn’t appear to be any ruling that negates this practice.

Nonetheless, good management practice requires that cases – and even potential cases – of conflict of interests be identified beforehand.

Employees at all levels should be reminded of the need to openly declare such interests or face disciplinary action.

The recent show of support by UMS students for the outgoing VC clearly looks like another case of manipulation.

Some may say that we must listen to the voices of students, voices that the minister has often championed.

However, Gerak is also aware that many of the so-called student representation in our campuses – like the many VCs in our 20 public universities – were put in place through political appointments and interference by the previous BN regime.

We must – and can - undo all these wrongs that have culminated in university administrators using all these dubious, underhanded and non-academic means to remain in power.

Gerak in its 10-point proposal submitted to the minister in June 2018, clearly argued that first, the deadwood political lackies and apparatchiks need to be removed or re-allocated to sites where they will no longer do harm.

Second, and at the same time, the minister must put together a team of senior respected and reform-minded scholars.

This team would be tasked with spearheading academic reform and setting up committees, including authoritative search committees, to autonomously pick the best intellectual leaders for our universities.

The window of opportunity is there. Dr Maszlee, as we continue to remind him, must grab this opportunity – for political expediency and to genuinely repair our much-damaged higher education system.

The latest World Bank report on our civil service has been scathing in its critique, backing Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s previous comments.

By the same token, Gerak believes that we, as taxpayers funding our 20 public universities, must demand much better service from our universities and their leaders, and we use the word cautiously for now.

In so doing, those leaders who continue to rot our universities must be replaced.

* Gerak is the Malaysian Academics Movement, a non-profit group for higher education professionals.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.