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The 'nobody' who led the Malays in their 'darkest' hour

DATO' MOHAMED ABID HAS THE BEST OF both worlds in today's Malaysia. He is the junior, in the early 1960s, to the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, as the Universiti Malaya was then known; today he is his crony. His daughter is married to the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed's second son, Mokhzhani. His business ventures in business has not been as successful. He was involved in a project that he thought could vault into the highest ranks of Bolehdom. He, and his sidekick, Dato' Khalimullah Hassan, the chairman of Bernama, dreamed up a project to turn the sea into land along the coast of Kedah. Why Kedah? It is the Prime Minister's homestate. It could not have taken off.

Since the venture had no money, its success depended on Kedah state putting up front its RM200 million worth of land, as share capital, in the RM1,000 million venture, which could then turned into bank loans. But the then mentri besar, Tan Sri Sanusi Junid, insisted on onerous conditions they could not meet. The venture collapsed. Tan Sri Sanusi and I have been friends since before he entered politics in 1974. The pair accuse me of having talked my friend out of this deal. Many believe it. But our friendship has lasted as long in our common love of books, and staying clear of each other's professional duties. That, however, is another story. But Tan Sri Sanusi remains, without doubt, my closest friend in politics, the bond strengthened after he left office. When I call him on the telephone, he always has time for me for he knows I do not bring a business man who wants an introduction. But this is a strange view in Malaysia, for relations are of no use if you do not make use of it for money.

But I stray. Dato' Mohamed was three years junior at the English College (now the Maktab Sultan Abu Bakar) in the 1950s. I did not know him then, but when we met decades later, at an old boys' function, we found we had many friends in common. He was one, as I was, who was round with Pak Lah in his darkest days, after he was sacked from the cabinet, had joined Tengku Razaliegh's "Semangat '46' political party. When Pak Lah returned, I withdrew from his circle for I had no interest in pursing a business or a crony career. From an insider I became an outsider. But that is how things change in Malaysia. I still think Pak Lah would be better off if those around him had his interests at heart. There are some, like Dato' Mohamed, but their influence on him is at best minimal. The pack of wolves have descended on him, and is at the heart of the friction - yes, the rumours are true - between Dr Mahathir and Pak Lah. Dato' Mohamed would find that soon enough, if he has not already.

Dato' Mohamed has writted a grandson's reflections of that redoubtable figure in Malaysian politics, Dato' Sir Onn bin Jaffar. When the history of Malaysia comes to written, on reflection and forethought, in the decades ahead, he would earn the true place denied him. It is not in the interests of the UMNO in power to give him credit. This memoir, 'Reflections of Pre-Independence Malaysia', is a welcome addition to the alas too few books of this kind. But it should not be hyped to what it is not. It is not a historical work, but it provides insights, mostly personal and human, which would help others explain the complex character he was. It is not a great book. It cannot be when it was written and compiled in a month, as Dato' Mohamed himself admits. I have not yet read this book, but it does not, on what I have read, stray too far from the hagiographies of Malaysian personalities over the years.

The New Straits Times describes Dato' Sir Onn as "the man who led the Malays in ... (their) ... darkest hour." The British had decided, after the war, to form one colonial unit of its possessions in Southeast Asia, one which inevitably would have deprived the Malay sultans of what little power they had. The Malays revolted in high dudgeon, and on 11 May 1946, and Malay organisations throughout the country met at the Sulaiman Club in Kampong Bahru to form UMNO. Dr Mahathir at that time was a member of one of the organisaions from Kedah at the meeting. It was to protect the powers of the rulers, and to prevent the rulers, who were arm-twisted to agree, from signing away their rights. It was UMNO which stopped that.

But that was forgotten when he walked out of UMNO in 1951. UMNO had rejected his proposal to allow non-Malays as members. There were other consequences of that: the UMNO religious wing walked out in sympathy, and is today the Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS), UMNO's principal rival for power. He formed first the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP), which the then MCA president, Sir Cheng-lock Tan, joined; when it failed, the untra-Malay nationalist Parti Negara, which won its only parliamentary constituency, in the 1959 general elections, when he was returned from Trengganu. This explains why his son, Tun Hussein Onn, when Prime Minister, had his doors open to any Parti Negara member, especially if he is from Trengganu. But he had become a nobody. UMNO never forgave him for his temerity to suggest non-Malays could join UMNO. A man whose temperament was multiracial could not have lasted, in any case, in a racial party that UMNO became.

I first met Dato' Sir Onn, when he stood as an IMP candidate in the 1955 general elections. His opponent was Dato' Sulaiman Abdul Rahman, the elder brother of Tun Dr Ismail, the future deputy prime minister, and who after stint in the Malayan cabinet went on to be Malaysian high commissioner to Australia. My father was an IMP member, and during his election campaign in the area that now is the Pasir Gudang port, he would stay at our house. It was school holidays at the time, I was 16, and I would accompany him, with his coffee and his medical pills, to make sure he got both when he should. His house at No. 2 Jalan Tebrau, of which Dato' Mohamed speaks fondly of, I knew well.

My memory is hazy on this but I suspect this was the residence of the UMNO president, and that Tengku Abdul Rahman later occupied it. But I could be wrong. We lived in Jalan Mohamed Taib, in the Wadi Hana area to the back of his house. For at this time, the Tengku lived in the vicinity, and he would often visit the neighbours and made friends with all. UMNO's headquarters was in Johore Bahru, in a gracious building along Jalan Ibrahim, not demolished to make way for a road. History is not a strong point of a community whose history is deliberately erased.

He is from an illustrious Johore family. His father, Dato' Jaffair, was Johore's first prime minister under Sultan Abu Bakar. Both married sisters from Circassia, in Turkey, gifts, so it is said, from the Ottoman Emperor, and it is from this marriage that the Onn family is related to the Johore royal house. Indeed, Sultan Ibrahim, the grandfather of the present sultan, adopted Dato' Sir Onn, and sent him to English for his studies, with his son, the future Sultan Ismail. But he was a rebel from the start. He started Johore's first Malay newspapers, involved himself in politics, challenged the more obnoxious and obsteporous acts of Sultan Ibrahim, and was externed from the state more than once.

Tan Sri Philip Kuok, in his memoirs, talks of how his father would sneak Dato' Onn into Johore Bahru from Singapore, hiding in the car boot. But he did yeomen service for the Sultan during the Japanese Occupation, all was forgiven, and was for a while Controller of Food. He became mentri besar after the war, as his elder brother had been during World War I. But he left when he quarreled yet again with the Sultan. He was instrumental, in the 1950s, in setting up the Rural and Industrial Development Authority or RIDA, the forerunner of today's MARA, when he was an appointed minister, officialled a Member, in the years before independence.

He died a poor man. He had RM 300 in his bank account, and RM30 on him. He was ignored, often humiliated, never forgiven for having walked out of UMNO. The Tengku respected him for who he was, and as far as I know, never talked ill of him. He mooted a possible pension for Dato' Sir Onn, but the proud old man would have none of it. The Malays and UMNO forgot him. The euphoria of independence, and the consequent arrogance, treated all in the Opposition, especially Dato' Sir Onn, with contempt. He was the right man at the wrong time. His notorious temper caused him often to lose his mind, and he reacted in anger when he should have kept quiet.

But he had a clear vision of what he wanted: though what he wanted was not what the Malay wanted. So UMNO has ignored him, and his name is brought forth only after UMNO the mass movement became UMNO the political party in 1988, and the heroes of the past had a new lease of life, not for their contributions but to etch into the Malay mindset the continuity between the old and new UMNO. Why, for instance, did no one consider a posthumous Tunship or higher award for him? When P. Ramlee was made a posthumous Tan Sri. But giving it to him now is a gratuitious insult and worse than the neglect.

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