Nazir Razak, chairperson of Malaysian banking giant CIMB and younger brother of Prime Minister Najib Razak, has once again flexed his non-political political muscles by calling for the national level of English proficiency to be raised, for the sake of Malaysian global competitiveness.
Posting as always to his personal Instagram account, the increasingly outspoken banker called for Malaysia to prioritise the command of English as a means to give local workers an edge – one that he says we’re losing fast:
To drive home the point, he used as his posted image a screencap of a Bloomberg report on how Japanese car manufacturer Honda plans to adopt English as its official language. Because if the Japanese can do it, why can’t we?
Oh, and just in case anyone wanted to call him out for abandoning his native culture, Nazir added that pushing for better English proficiency doesn’t mean Bahasa Malaysia would have to be neglected.
We can’t wait to see what Nazir’s proposed multiethnic national unity NGO will introduce to the public conversation once he and Saifuddin Abdullah get it off the ground.
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