According to
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/175572.asp, Sultan Iskandar of Johor will be conferred an honarary doctorate by National University of Singapore on 12 April 2007.
Well, it must be an honour for the Sultan, because NUS is afterall one of the worldÂ’s top 20 universities.
While IÂ’m not questioning the SultanÂ’s eligibility in getting this honour from NUS, I want to question NUSÂ’s criteria for selecting the recipients for this honorary doctarate.
Does NUS consider the legal history of the receipient prior to the award? Would someone who is prone to violence, and even for murder, be even considered for such an award?
Sultan Iskandar, according to
http://www.answers.com/topic/sultan-iskandar, has not only assaulted others,
he even clubbed his caddy to death. It appears that the caddy laughed when the Sultan missed a stroke, and there and then, he whacked the caddy to death with a golf clubÂ….(or so the story goes, since I was not thereÂ…Â….). But due to the ability of Malaysian royalty to rise above the law, the Sultan came out unscathed in all these incidents. Malaysian royals, it seems, can get away scot free with murder, literally.
So now, NUS is going to award its highest honour to the Sultan? What does this say about the ‘value’ of this honorary degree, if NUS can find it fit to award it to someone with a chequered legal history and blood on his hands?
And why is this big event not highlighted on the NUS homepage at
http://www.nus.edu.sg/???
I smell a conspiracy...
(first blogged here:
http://blueheeler.wordpress.com/)
