JUST six months into the job, there were already calls for Education Minister Maszlee Malik to be fired. Finally, about a year and a half after he was assigned the admittedly challenging portfolio, the former academic threw in the towel today, after months of mounting public pressure.

Maszlee made his first policy boo-boo when he decided to change the colour of school shoes from white to black.

While it might seem a petty issue and certainly not one to warrant the boot, it nonetheless earned Maszlee much public ridicule and the the ignominy of being labelled “the shoe minister” for a while.

The former lecturer at International Islamic University Malaysia who was a first-time minister, however, failed to learn from his first slip and as the year wore on, lurched from one controversy to another with such clockwork regularity that the Malaysian public began asking if he was the right man for the job, never mind his impressive academic credentials.

The inexperienced politician’s next gaffe, which again brought him much grief, was an innocuous appeal to the hotels to lend their pools to the schools for students to practise swimming.

He announced that the government proposed to introduce swimming co-curriculum activities in schools to tackle the high number of student drownings, but an impatient public, fed up with the wait for “real reforms” demanded to know what he was doing to make Malaysian students more competitive, stop religion from creeping into schools, and fulfilling Pakatan Harapans’s election promises, such as recognition for the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC).

Maszlee next decided to accept the offered presidency of his alma mater in September of 2018 – a mere four months into his ministerial appointment.

His insistence on becoming the seventh president of the university on provoked claims that the PH government was no better than the previous Barisan Nasional regime from those who viewed the appointment as a contradiction of the PH manifesto to keep institutions of higher learning free of political interference.

He was finally forced to give up the appointment.

That proved a little too late for his critics, who viewed his reluctance to relinquish the post as arrogance and greed for power.

He came in for more criticism when in April last year, he defended the PH government’s decision to stick to the ousted BN government’s race-based quota for the matriculation programme.

While Putrajaya announced an increase in the number of students for the programme from 25,000 to 40,000, it stated it was sticking to the 90% Bumiputera quota, which caused an uproar among the non-Malays.

Maszlee at a press conference today attributed his quitting to the unpopularity of three of his decisions – to teach Jawi in the vernacular schools, to provide the schools with internet access, and the free school breakfast programme.

He said the decisions were “perceived to have plunged the PH government into crisis”.

The free breakfast programme could cost the government as much as RM1.67 billion, he stated in October last year, while the school internet access project has also run into trouble with the contractor, YTL Communications accusing the government of breaching its contract after it had invested RM4 billion in making the schools internet-ready.

It was the Jawi issue, however, that delivered the coup de grace to Maszlee’s career in the cabinet. He declared in August last year that beginning this year, the Jawi subject was compulsory for all schools, including the vernacular schools as well as in all national and national-type schools in Sabah and Sarawak.

The decision drew a strong reaction from non-Malay parents, Chinese and Tamil education associations who see the move as creeping Islamisation.

DAP, a major component of the ruling PH, spoke up against the proposal, with Sarawak DAP chief Chong Chieng Jen saying the party would propose to the cabinet to make the subject elective in the state’s Chinese schools.

Chong, who is Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, had said this was because the party had taken note “of the majority of voices among Sarawakians”.

Today, just hours before Maszlee tendered his resignation, a coalition of Chinese and Indian education and cultural organisations, including Dong Jiao Zong, Hua Zong, Tamil Foundation, Child Organisation and the Selangor Tamil Association, called upon the Education Ministry to hold talks with them over the implementation of Jawi lessons in vernacular schools.

The issue had turned ugly and was a test to the already strained relations between the various ethnic communities of the country.

Finally, Maszlee was again put on the back foot after an official memo giving permission to the Islamic Propagation Foundation (Yadim) to carry out “dakwah” (propagation) activities in school was leaked.

The memo allowed Islamic propagation to be carried out in schools, teachers training institutes, polytechnics, community colleges, public universities and selected private universities.

That served to reinforce non-Muslims suspicions that the ministry has a secret agenda to Islamise the schools.

A terrible performance rating in a poll undertaken by an online portal, with only 16% of the respondents approving of  Maszlee’s performance, sealed his fate.

The voters placed Maszlee’s performance second last – ahead only of Entrepreneur Development Minister Mohd Redzuan Yusof. – January 2, 2020.