Will Najib/Shafie "sink or swim" with Hashim?

Dr. Hashim Yaacob is a smart operator but he has the wrong skills. As Vice Chancellor of the premier university of the nation, he should stand head and shoulder above all academicians in the country like the great Vice Chancellors of their time like Ungku Aziz, Hamzah Sendut and Syed Hussein Alatas to provide the vision, leadership and direction for world-class higher education. But Hashim is so colourless that even ordinary University of Malaya students have difficulty in naming their Vice Chancellor.

Hashim is not without talents. He is undoubtedly a first-class survivalist, which explains his political survival instincts when the world is collapsing around him following the damning THES World University Ranking 2005. His one and only obsession was not how to raise the international stocks of University of Malaya with a solid strategy and programme to restore its excellence, quality and standards, but how to save his own skin.

He came up with a two-prong strategy to ensure his own survival as VC – firstly, the instantaneous erection of seven giant billboards all over the campus glorifying the UM for its “achievements” in the THES University Ranking 2005; secondly, hijacking the support of the Higher Education Minister, Dr. Shafie Salleh and Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak to his cause by huge displays of their pictures in this campaign, as illustrated by the two photographs in this blog.

I do not know whether Shafie and Najib are going to sink or swim with Hashim, but I know that for the sake of Malaysians and love of the country, University of Malaya should not sink or swim with Hashim.