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The New Era College controversy raged in the Malaysian Chinese press throughout the second half of 2008. There were occasional reports in the English-language press but it made headlines in all the Malaysian and Singapore media when the Chairman of the Board of the college was given a bloody nose by a graduate of the college during the graduation ceremony on 11 January 2009.

This chronicle of the controversy counts as the memoirs of my last year of service at the Dong Jiao Zong-run New Era College. It will be of interest to those who are concerned with the affairs of the Malaysian Chinese community, in particular, the Chinese education movement. Among other things, this controversy revolved round the issue of the termination of my contract as principal of New Era College.

In the process, it split the Chinese education movement as well as the remnants of the former left movement in Malaysia. It even split families within this left movement. Dong Zong, the United School Committees Association of Malaysia had to call an unprecedented Emergency General Meeting over my contract, the first time in all its 54 years of existence.

I joined the movement in 1983 when I had just returned to Malaysia from my studies abroad. The visionary leader of the movement at the time, Lim Fong Seng invited me to serve in the organisation and it was my honour and pleasure to be in his team. Throughout the eighties and nineties, the Chinese education movement faced numerous obstacles put in its way by the ruling party, UMNO.

While every leader of the Malaysian Chinese education movement has stoically faced sabotage from this external force, from 2005 onward, the secretariat of Dong Zong began to face internal dissension when the new Chairman of Dong Zong, Yap Sin Tian took office. In 2006, he terminated the service of Bock Tai Hee, the CEO of the Dong Zong secretariat who had led the secretariat since the eighties. This led to the departure of nearly twenty committed and talented young activists from the movement. This new leader of the Chinese education movement appeared to have a new agenda of his own, quite different from his predecessors.

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