I WENT through primary and secondary education having been taught mainly in Bahasa Melayu, with English confined to English language lessons. Yet this afforded my batch mates and me with the proficiency to transition to study mainly in English for our undergraduate and for some, postgraduate degrees.

Personally, I am able to divide my use of language quite categorically – I work in English, I speak mainly in English with smatterings of Bahasa words spoken in a Penangite accent, and I am able to read and write comfortably in Bahasa Melayu for formal occasions. Back when I was working in public health, I also encountered many new colloquial terms used by the diverse Malay speakers, for contrary to popular belief, none of us go around speaking and writing the formal Bahasa Melayu we learnt during our schooling years!

Nonetheless, a pet peeve for me is the destruction of Bahasa Melayu through the irritating “no vowels allowed” text-speak used by most, and the insistence of converting English words into Bahasa Melayu when we have perfectly phrased equivalents in the language – “jernelis” in lieu of “wartawan”, anyone?  I even considered writing this column in Bahasa Melayu, just to prove a point.

A part of me feels that perhaps, in our haste to uphold nationalistic pride through the empowerment of Bahasa Melayu, we have failed to see beyond the superficial need for a paper certification in the language. Would an overarching language policy with emphasis on Bahasa Melayu be truly beneficial for Malaysia as whole?

Designing and amending policies is not a straightforward process, having to take into account available data, social nudges, and managing public perception. Sometimes, public backlash could halt the implementation of a new policy, force the government to backpedal on policies or simply create a prolonged media circus to overshadow the real problems – that is, until yet another exposé by media outlets.

The most recent example of such a kerfuffle is the proposal to amend the Medical Act 1971 to include the Bahasa Melayu SPM minimum pass requirement for medical graduates. According to the Health Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. S. Subramaniam, only 23 of 4,500 medical graduates are currently affected by this change in policy and it was expected that the issue of medical graduates without the SPM Bahasa Melayu pass requirement would be resolved “in a year”.

The discourse following the proposed amendment focused on empowerment of Bahasa Melayu. Many Malay supremacy groups issued statements lauding the new requirements as a measure to uphold the sanctity of Bahasa Melayu, while on social media, many regurgitated similar opinions, claiming that those in medical service had to be fluent in the country’s lingua franca so as to provide comprehensive health treatment for patients.

Looking between the lines, one cannot help but suspect that this proposed amendment would ‘shift the goalposts’ for the timeline of medical graduates to gain housemanship placements. Under the current Act, the Ministry is only obliged to provide housemanship placements to those with recognized medical degrees and adding this language requirement would add another ‘hurdle to overcome’ for medical graduates.

From media reports, the Ministry of Health reportedly claimed it would make exemptions on this ruling for the 23 medical graduates affected by the new  Bahasa Melayu SPM requirements. Yet, looking at data from a soon-to-be-published Penang Institute in Kuala Lumpur study on housemanship placements helmed by Dr Lim Chee Han, the current glut in the housemanship placement system is primarily caused by the number of medical graduates who are not able to complete their housemanship on time (24 months under the current system) for a complex number of reasons, with a significant number of these “delayed housemen” having obtained their medical degrees from foreign institutions.

Would adding the need for a SPM certificate with a pass for Bahasa Melayu help in tackling the glut issue constructively and help us reach the reduced doctor to population ratio (from 1:600 to 1:400) befitting of a soon-to-be high income nation? Would this requirement also apply to the significant number of foreign medical specialists and other medical graduates trained abroad before they are allowed to practice in Malaysia?

Wouldn’t it be more prudent for medical graduates to sit for an IELTS-like examination to test language proficiency prior to their housemanship placements, with the conversation and listening elements in the test being realistic and inclusive of the melting pot of vernacular languages used by lay Malaysians? After all, surely the ability to communicate with patients is a greater priority than a paper certificate that merely proves their essay writing skills in Bahasa Melayu.  

Policymakers should not miss the forest for the trees. I think this kerfuffle should serve a good example for policymakers to communicate effectively on our findings and recommendations, and to set clear timelines for policy implementation.

In the meantime, perhaps all of us, myself included, should start conversing more in Bahasa Melayu, learn to appreciate good literature from writers who write in Bahasa Melayu and not limit our use of the language only to our dealings with the government. – July 16, 2017.

* Lyana Khairuddin is currently reading for a Master of Public Policy at The Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford; funded by Chevening-Khazanah Scholarship. Lyana was formerly a researcher at Penang Institute.The opinion here is her own and does not represent the views of her funders, the School or university.

* 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.