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The Tengku was born a century ago this week, but who cares?

A CENTENARY IS CELEBRATED come this Saturday, 8 February 2003, but few Malaysians, most shockingly in UMNO, would know what it was. I asked a range of people, in parliament, in the cabinet, in UMNO, in MCA, in the opposition, in the arts, in education, in the civil service, in business, if that date meant anything to them. But for a handful, I drew a blank. Until the DAP chairman, Mr Lim Kit Siang, asked last month why no one is bothered about the centenary of the birth of Independent Malaysia's greatest son, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra al-haj, few were even aware of it.

The New Straits Times editor-in-chief, Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, ignored it when he waxed eloquent about the 27th anniversary of Tun Abdul Razak's death, and mentioned it briefly only after Mr Lim's comment. The Tengku was born on this day in 1903, the sixth son of then Sultan of Kedah and his Thai wife. His was a typical wasteful life of a playboy younger son of a ruler followed, until in mid-life, he burst into the Malayan firmament -- by accident, he would tell all those who would care to listen -- and into history.

What an accident that was! He was the right man in the right place. When Dato' Sir Onn Jaffar, the UMNO president walked out in high dudgeon when his plan to open the party to non-Malays was rejected, this playboy prince, then a forgotten deputy public prosecutor, succeeded him. And galvanised UMNO and Malaya to demand independence from Britain, which he achieved on 31 August 1957. Knowing himself and his weaknesses, he surrounded himself with capable men. But he made the decisions, which once made rarely wavered. He had that rare ability to listen to advise and decide quickly and firmly.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew still cannot accept he was outmanouevred by the Tengku when Singapore was forced out Malaysia in 1965. He initiated the coalition, which in a different form, governs Malaysia today. He believed in the unity of races, in practice, rather than in the theory it is practiced now. His was a master in the art of the compromise, would not discuss anything in the cabinet the MCA president, Tun Tan Siew Sin, or the MIC president, Tun V.T. Sambanthan, did not agree to. He always referred to himself as a 'primus inter pares', first amongst equals, in government.

He was no pushover. His velvet glove hid a mailed fist. When MCA flexed its muscles, and demanded, in 1959, more than was agreed in the coalition agreement he deftly neutralised the then president, Dr (now Tun) Lim Chong Eu. As President Sukarno who objected to plans to include Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore into a larger Malaysian federation. The speed with which he had Singapore removed from the Malaysian federation in 1965 is more dramatic than Mr Lee Kuan Yew has made out, in his memoirs and elsewhere, and one in which Mr Lee did all the running in a desperate attempt to stay on.

I have seen the files of correspondence relating to this when they were dumped into the waste paper basket in a petty act of peevishness by the anti-Tengku stalwarts in Tun Razak's office, the most prominent of whom is the same Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad who is editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times. (The discarded files are now in the National Archives, after I brought it to the attention of Tun Razak's principal private secretary, the late Tan Sri Zain Azrai, later secretary-general of the Treasury and chairman of MAS, the airline. But that is a story waiting to be told.)

The letters made it clear it was the Tengku who dictated the pace, with his draft replies written in hand on the top secret letters received from the Singapore leaders. When he made the fateful decision, it took even the Yang Dipertuan Agung, the father of the present, by surprise. It was done with such stealth and secrecy that even his cabinet was not aware of it until the last possible moment. Had he not been around, or if this had not happened, the early years of Malaya and Malaysia, and its subsequent progress, would have been so different.

His biggest mistake was to stay on in office too long. Had he retired after the end of Confrontation, he would have been a greater figure in Malaysian history, and remembered with much affection. Instead, when he was forced out of office, after the 13 May 1969 riots, he was a despised man in UMNO. Tun Abdul Razak, who succeeded him, was too anxious to be prime minister, and a cabal of followers and acolytes, including one Mahathir bin Mohamed, deliberately set out to destroy him.

The pettiness that followed -- Income Tax seizing almost all of his gratuity for unpaid taxes, gratuitous insults which offended the Old Man greatly, making a total non-person of him, even after he became the first secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference -- continued until Tun Razak died. He returned to the centre stage again only because he lived to a ripe old age of 87, and returned to the people's affections that he died a happy man. He remains, with Tun Hussein Onn, the only UMNO presidents who did not join the UMNO Dr Mahathir turned into a political from the mass movement it was until then.

There is no mistaking his greatness or his statesmanship. He will eventually return to the central pantheon of Malaysian heroes, as important to its history as General George Washington is to the United States or Mahatma Gandhi to India or President Sukarno to Indonesia. But his birth centenary is celebrated in embarrassed silence, no one in authority bothered about it, even the MCA, which built an education systed around his name, has not said a word about it. Malaysia is preoccupied with the all but irrelevant Non Aligned Movement, and in marking that, ignores its greatest son. The minister of education plans a low key occasion, as an afterthought. But few else. There are no commemorative stamps in a country which does not need an excuse for one. He is still, for all his achievements since grudgingly admitted, still a non-person in this epoch of Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed.

Our past determines who we are. But in Malaysia under the National Front (BN) and UMNO, the past is irrelevant. It is the present which shapes us, we are told, not the past. History begins when the New Prime Minister is sworn in, and all else confined to the dustbin. Why do we do this? We have as rich a history as any nation, dating to the pre-Christian era. Yet we deliberately obliterate that to a politically-desirable date to remember our past. When that is the national mood, why should the centenary of a man, albeit this country's greatest son, be a subject of celebration and remembrance? But we must. We owe it to ourselves and the future. We are the latest editions of our past, and what we are is the sum total of our past. In the politically charged atmosphere we live in, this is treason. But we should proudly celebrate and remember the centenary of Malaysia's greatest son, even if those who should, ignore or forgot it. Why did'nt we?

[A shortened comment of this appears in the latest issue of Seruan Keadilan, the organ of Parti Keadilan Nasional, on sale over the weekend]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my