Education minister slams Guan Eng over 'hate government' move

PUTRAJAYA: The Education Ministry today condemned what it claimed to be a move by Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng to use the education platform to make students hate the government.
Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid said the act reflected the extreme politics of the DAP secretary-general who he added was prepared to stoop to the level of teaching something bad to students for his own interests.
"It is something that a person of the status of a chief minister should not do; something which can be equated to the demeanour of a street politician," he said to reporters after presenting excellent service awards to 478 ministry staff here.
Mahdzir was commenting on a video uploaded onto the Facebook page of a Chinese daily showing Lim teaching a song condemning the Goods and Services Tax at the launch of the Penang People's Tuition Programme recently.
"In a cosmopolitan country, we should promote unity, not politics of hatred," Mahdzir said.
On another matter, Mahdzir said the ministry would seek police opinion before making a statement on a newspaper report alleging that school children had solicited the services of prostitutes.
He said the report had only quoted statements from the prostitutes who claimed to have customers among school children and this could only be verified with information from the police. — Bernama