It’s a tall tale, Tun Hanif – it never happened

My attention has just been drawn to Tun Hanif Omar’s Sunday Star fortnightly column “Walk the beat, department heads, or face the music”, where he narrated a most absorbing story involving me during the May 13 riots some 36 years ago in 1969.

This is what the ex-Inspector-General Police wrote:

In the midst of all this, Tun Sambanthan, then MIC President and Minister of Works, Telecommunications and Post, reported to Tun Ismail that the DAP was politicking that morning by distributing political pamphlets at the MB Selangor’s meet-the-people session.

Politicking had been banned following the May 13 riots and yet, Special Branch officers who were present did not take action. Yes, the Tun also demanded that the Special Branch Head in Selangor be demoted.

Whilst the Secretary-General of the Home Affairs Ministry was on the line to the Deputy IGP on the matter, Tun Ismail asked who the Head of SB Selangor was?

“Encik Hanif Omar, Tun.”

“What? What’s the matter with that boy? He used to be all right. Bring him before me.”

Thus I was marched into his presence – the D/IGP on my left and the Acting Director SB on my right.

“You know, Hanif, how close you were to being demoted?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve been informed. Sir, you had me promoted several times, for which I thank you. If I have messed up and you demote me, I have only myself to blame, sir. But, what wrong have I done?”

“Why did you allow Kit Siang to distribute his pamphlets this morning? That’s against the ‘no politicking rule’!”

“No, sir. The moment my officers picked up the pamphlets they went to see the AG who ruled in writing that it wasn’t politicking. They then lodged a police report to that effect and gave me the AG’s ruling. Here’s a copy of the report and the AG’s ruling, sir.”

“Oh, you checked with Kadir (AG Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Yusof), did you? All right, Hanif, I’m glad to hear that.”

Then he laughed as he said, “I thought I had to demote you,” and we all laughed with him. Mine was a laugh of sheer relief!

If we were a more responsible lot in those days, this was a major reason: bosses didn’t suffer the irresponsible; they would not accept mediocrity. When we were held to clear standards, corruption became that much harder. The light was always on us.

I confess that I found Hanif’s story most enthralling - as it must be to all his readers. In my case, it was also intriguing. I was reading it for the first time – not his narration but the story. It’s a tall tale, Tun Hanif – for it never happened.

I will one day write about what I was doing during those fateful days in 1969 – from May 10 the polling day for the 1969 general election when I was in Malacca, to the outbreak of May 13 riots in Kuala Lumpur when I was in Kota Kinabalu till May 18, 1969 when I flew into Subang Airport from Singapore fully expecting to be arrested and was actually arrested by the waiting police at the airport.

For this blog, suffice it for me to state that I was never in Kuala Lumpur or Selangor as a free person after May 13, 1969 for 17 months, when I was a guest of His Majesty’s Government until I was released from the Muar Detention Centre on October 1, 1970.

I don’t know when this apocryphal story first latched onto the ex-IGP’s stream of memories, but it should be a good study as to how myths are created.

I commend Hanif however for the thrust of his column, which is to impress on departmental heads their duty to assume full responsibility for whatever happens in their department.

Hanif recounted the following narrative in 1969, which I hope is not as apocryphal as the one he had told about me:

Shortly after, a motorcyclist was killed when he crashed into a hole dug into the road in Cheras by the Public Works Department. Tun Ismail (Home Affairs Minister at the time) fell on the KL police like a ton of bricks and berated them for failing to prevent the accident.

Police explanation that it was the PWD which had dug the road and failed to place a lit-up warning signboard there was brushed aside. He held that the police had a duty to protect life and property; their mobile patrols cruised the area and must have seen the danger, and for them not to demand the PWD to erect a signboard was dereliction of duty. He applied the tort principle of duty of care quite widely on the police.

If the culture of responsibility inculcated by Tun Razak and Tun Ismail in 1969 as described by Hanif had been maintained ( when it should have been enhanced over time), then hosts of Malaysians would not have died in vain in the past few decades in avoidable deaths caused by negligent and irresponsible departments and departmental heads – including the most recent case in September of a hawker-motorist who died when he crashed into a pothole in a major road in Alor Star which had been left unattended for a considerable time.

Is the present IGP Tan Sri Mohd Bakri Omar reading and listening to what his predecessor is writing?

But Hanif should have taken the principle of zero-tolerance for irresponsibility, mediocrity and corruption one step further, to also ask Ministers to “walk the beat or face the music”, to be held accountable for the failure of duty, whether omission or commission, of their departmental heads. Only then is the circle of responsibility complete marking the advent of accountability, transparency and good governance. Only then can we say that “First World Infrastructure, First World Mentality” has arrived in Malaysia.