FIRST things first. Malaysians agree with the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) that nobody should dispute the status of the honorary doctorate awarded to Prime Minister (PM) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob by the Nihon University which is a leading institution in Japan.

After all, the prestige of the award is an honour, too, for each and every of the 34 million Malaysians from Perlis in the north to Johor in the south and across the South China Sea to Sarawak and Sabah.

In the same light, Malaysians deserve the right to question the authenticity of the so-called prestigious award not to shame or humiliate their PM but to feel 100% assured that the country’s most powerful man in the government did not get a raw deal in the process.

That probably explains why a Twitter user went the full distance to verify with MQA’s online system, only to raise the alarm bell when he found out that the university was not listed.

MQA was spot-on albeit sounding a tad defensive that for foreign qualifications not listed in the Malaysian system, the verification process was based on the recognition status of the country of origin.

There is also some merit to Ismail Sabri being conferred the honorary doctorate in recognition of his efforts and contributions in the fight against COVID-19 as he was featured almost on a daily basis addressing the nation in his capacity as senior minister (security cluster)-cum-defence minister at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021.

Nevertheless, some academicians FocusM spoke to opined that the honour should be better reserved for health director-general Tan Sri Noor Hisham Abdullah who is a full-fledge medical man given COVID-19 is perceived as a health crisis.

Again, Malaysians fully concurred with MQA that every honorary degrees awarded by universities has its own value and that in practice, it is awarded to selected public figures for their significant contribution in a particular field, be it academia, industry experts, community activists and national leaders.

Thorny issue

One issue resolved, another issue surfaces.

Yours truly wonders if Malaysians now have every right to feel angry and embarrassed upon learning that Nihon University’s former chairman Hidetoshi Tanaka was previously arrested for allegedly evading around 53 million yen (RM1.83 mil) in income tax.

As reported by The Asahi Shimbun, the 74-year-old Tanaka had concealed about 120 million yen (RM4.14 mil) in income through rebates and gifts in 2018 and 2020 from two suspects indicted in a breach of trust investigation.

So lamented one senior academician who was only willing to speak on conditions of anonymity:

“How come the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) didn’t get the relevant authorities like our Higher Education Ministry to run a profile check on Nihon University before our PM accepted the honorary doctorate?

“We could have in fact graciously turn down the offer. Now we risk having the whole world staring at us as if we paid for the honorary doctorate by virtue of the tax evasion case implicated on the university’s chairman late last year.

“This is shameful not only for the PM but for every Malaysian given that Malaysia doesn’t enjoy a good ranking in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perception Index.” – May 27, 2022

https://focusmalaysia.my/not-disputing-pms-honorary-doctorate-but-the-shady-nature-of-its-giver/