The Umno, PKR and PAS internal strife (part 6)

By MT Webmaster Last updated Apr 15, 2015

But that was not what people like the Tunku are made of. And while he was ousted because he was too friendly with the Chinese and gave the Chinese too much face and was not Malay enough, the Tunku was one Prime Minister who was ‘the happy Prime Minister’ and who wanted to also see all Malaysians happy as well and who cried every time he talked about May 13.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

When Onn Jaafar resigned from Umno — because the party would not agree to his proposal to open Umno to the non-Malays — the party asked Tunku Abdul Rahman to take over. The Tunku, however, refused. Instead, he suggested that Tun Razak Hussein should become Umno’s new President.

The Tunku, a member of the Kedah Royal Family, had in fact been invited by Onn Jaafar to become the Chairman of Umno Kedah. Onn Jaafar was what the Malays would call an orang istana or courtier (a.k.a. aristocrat) of the Johor palace, the place where Umno was formed.

Yes, Umno was formed in the Johor Palace. And since the Tunku was also an orang istana it made sense that he take over seeing that the Malays were (and still are to a certain extent, as Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad lamented) a feudalistic race.

But the Tunku would rather enjoy life than take on the burden of leading the party. Hence he did not want the job. After a lot of persuading, however, he finally agreed and took over as Umno’s new leader.

To understand why the Tunku did not want the heavy responsibility of leading Umno, which would involve engaging the British in negotiating independence or Merdeka for Malaya, you need to know a bit of background regarding the man. However, if I want to relate his entire life history I will need at least ten episodes for this story alone.

Hence allow me to briefly say that the Tunku received his early education in a Siamese school in Bangkok (which was conducted in Thai) and after three years he transferred to the Penang Free School. At 16 the Tunku was awarded a scholarship to study in Cambridge where he made very little progress in his studies.

To cut a long story short, the Tunku was enjoying himself too much to be bothered with his studies. The Tunku also made history by being the first Cambridge student to own a car, an open-hood sports car on top of that.

In those days Cambridge students were not allowed to own cars, only bicycles. Hence the Sultan of Kedah had to write to Cambridge for special permission and of course the British could not say no to a Malay Sultan (they still can’t until today, in fact).

So the Tunku was very much an icon, so to speak, zipping down the narrow streets of Cambridge with his English girlfriends in an open-hood sports car. Hell, whoever would have time to study with that type of lifestyle?

Five years later, the Tunku returned home not any more educated than before he left for England. But that did not really matter because the Tunku really had a good time as a student who never wasted his time studying.

After the end of WWII, the British decided to send Malayans — Malays, Chinese, Indians and others — to England to study. The British knew that one day soon they would have to grant Malaya independence so they wanted to prepare Malayans to take over the running of the country. And better that they handed power to British-educated Malayans than to the Communists (and I do not mean just the Chinese but many Malay Communists as well) who would be hostile towards the British.

In 1945 Britain was practically bankrupt because of the war and two years later India had gained its independence. Hence Britain depended on resource-rich Malaya for its survival, which was contributing to 70% of the British economy. So the last thing the British wanted was for Malaya to fall into the hands of the Communists who would nationalise all the British interests in Malaya and Britain would end up with nothing.

The way out would be for the British to educate local Malayans and send them back to Malaya not only with a British education but also as brown, yellow and black Englishmen, if you know what I mean. Hence boatloads of Malayans were sent off to England, my father, Tun Razak Hussein, the Tunku (yet again for the second time around) amongst those many.

Hence I managed to get a lot of stories from my mother as to what was going on in England from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s until Malaya obtained independence in 1957. And, boy, these stories would make your toes curl.

The Malay Malayans — who were more political than the Chinese, Indians and others — reactivated the Malay Society of Great Britain, which had earlier been formed by the Tunku before the war. The Tunku became its president with Abdul Razak Hussein (later Tun) as its Vice-President.

(I still have the photograph of its founding with my father and all those other Malays dressed in tuxedos, which was basically a who’s-who of Malayan society during the Merdeka era of the 1950s).

Umno, of course, was already in existence then but it was not really a party that was fighting for Merdeka but more fighting to retain the powers of the Sultan and to oppose the Malayan Union, which would see the powers of the Sultans eroded.

So, as I said, the Tunku was not really interested in political power. He had to be coaxed into taking over the leadership of Umno. He would have been very happy to allow Tun Razak to lead the party and become Malaya’s Prime Minister while the Tunku continued enjoying his life partying, drinking, gambling and horse racing.

There is this story told to me by one PAS leader back in the 1970s. One day the Tunku attended a funeral and in Islam you also conduct burial prayers (sembahyang jenazah) during such occasions. But these prayers are conducted standing up and not by prostrating on the ground (sujud) like normal prayers.

So the congregation would stand in close quarters and the Tunku complained that the front row was standing too close that he has no room to sujud. Until today I do not know whether the Tunku really did not know how to pray or whether he was just being funny, as usual.

The other ‘problem’ with the Tunku is that most of his friends were Chinese and not Malays (even his private secretary was Chinese and I met him once and got a lot of very interesting stories from him).

It is said that the Tunku’s first wife was Chinese as well (Meriam Chong) who converted to Islam and became a very staunch Muslim. She prayed and fasted but never succeeded in persuading the Tunku to do the same.

After Meriam died the Tunku secretly married his old landlady from England, Violet Coulson, who took the Muslim name Puteh Binti Abdullah. However, because the Tunku was too busy with his public duties, which resulted in them living apart most of the time, she eventually went back to England.

The Tunku’s third wife was Sharifah Rodziah Syed Alwi Barakbah. But she could not give him any children so he secretly married his fourth wife, a Chinese named Bibi Chong, who gave him two daughters.

So that very briefly was the Tunku, the First Prime Minister of Malaya and Bapak Merdeka (the Father of Independence). So why would a man like that want to become Prime Minister?

But he was ‘pushed’ into the job anyway although he did not want it and then they plotted to get rid of him.

In an interview with K Das, the Tunku said, why did they have to start a race riot just to get rid of him? If they wanted him to go all they needed to do was to tell him so and he would have gladly resigned.

With tears streaming down his face he said why did Allah curse him by allowing him to live to see Malayans killing Malayans during May 13. He would rather have died than live to see the tragedy of May 13. Choking with emotion the Tunku told K Das that he could not continue with the interview.

The Tunku died in 1990 at the age of 87 without rejoining Umno, which he said was not the original Umno but Dr Mahathir’s Umno. How ironical that the Father of Independence died outside Umno and in bitter opposition to the party that he no longer regarded as legitimate.

The Tunku died broke having spent all his wealth on the party. He was so broke that he could not even pay the income tax that he owed. His critics say that he gambled all his money away. Even if that is really the reason why, he had so many Chinese friends and even made Chinese like Lim Goh Tong into billionaires. So they could have easily given the Tunku millions if he needed the money.

I have never known any other Umno man cry over the tragedy of May 13 other than warn the Chinese that if they talk too much then expect May 13 Version 2.

Where have the Malays like the Tunku disappeared to? Sigh….