Putrajaya mum on punishment for Johor racist headmistress

Despite mounting public pressure, the Najib administration has yet to announce whether it planned to punish Johor school principal Siti Inshah Mansor for allegedly uttering racial slurs.

Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin reiterated this afternoon that the buck was now in the hands of the “enforcement authority”, which is due to make a decision soon.

The Deputy Prime Minister who was speaking to reporters after launching a road safety joint operation at KL Sentral here, said this after he was asked if the government planned to use the Sedition Act against Siti Inshah.

“That one, I will leave it entirely up to the enforcement authority to enforce under whatever law. I believe there are available enforcement instruments that can be used... under whatever law,” he replied quickly.

On Thursday, when Muhyiddin was bombarded with the same queries in Putrajaya, he said that the case had been transferred to the Public Service Department (PSD) to decide.

“We have transferred the case to PSD and we hope they will make a decision immediately. That is why it was transferred last week and the PSD director has been asked to make a decision as soon as possible,” he had said.

Before that, Muhyiddin had directed Education director-general Tan Sri Alimuddin Mohd Dom to set up a task force to probe the incident.

Alimuddin had previously invited flak when he claimed shortly after the incident that it was merely a misunderstanding and had been settled between the principal and the school parents.

Siti Inshah entered the limelight recently after she allegedly told the SMK Tunku Abdul Rahman school assembly that the Chinese could go back to China and that the Indians looked like “dogs” when they wore their prayer strings.

04/09/10

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