Terence Netto
Dr Tan Chee Khoon, once the quintessential opposition leader, passed away 30 years ago and is all but forgotten today.
But for three hours on 23 August, at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, his memory was re-ignited before an audience of about 100 people by his youngest daughter Poh Lai and economist Jomo Kwame Sundram.
The occasion was a public forum, organised by Aliran, the social consciousness movement based in Penang.
Poh Lai spoke movingly. With the aid of video stills, she was able to re-ignite the embers of memory of the times when Chee Khoon was regarded as ‘Mr Opposition’, for the resoluteness of his espousal of issues that mattered to the public.
Around half the attendees were 70 years and above, and so would have been able to recall the Chee Khoon of his heyday in the 1960s and ’70s.
Poh Lai’s narrative gave this lot renewed appreciation of the man’s life and valour.
- Sign up for Aliran's free daily email updates or weekly newsletters or both
- Make a one-off donation to Persatuan Aliran Kesedaran Negara (ALIRAN), Maybank a/c 507246118995 or CIMB a/c 8004240948
- Make a regular pledge or periodic auto-donation to Aliran
- Become an Aliran member
At the end of her talk, there must have been a furtive finger raised to flick away a teardrop of remembrance at the travails endured by her father, from his poverty-stricken upbringing before World War Two through his student days in the University of Malaya in Singapore.
It is a story of stoicism, courage and fortitude.
A measure of the hardship Chee Khoon endured was the loss of sight in his left eye from an injury suffered while tapping rubber on family land along the 10th mile Cheras Road.
In his remarks, left-wing public intellectual Jomo situated Chee Khoon in the context of the movement that was poised to make a credible claim to leading a fledgling Malayan and (after 1963) Malaysian nation because it was the most popular political force in the country from 1947 till Merdeka in 1957.
That presumption was forestalled by, first, the British and then by the Alliance government led by Tunku Abdul Rahman, employing the Internal Security Act (ISA) to cripple the left-wing movement, which included among its leading lights ethnic Malay, Chinese and Indian stalwarts capable of unifying a multiracial citizenry.
It had shown its strength by calling for a hartal (general strike) in October 1947 to press its formulation of the People’s Constitutional Proposals on the British colonial government.
The proposals envisioned a united Malayan nation, with Malay primacy, though not dominance, one of the building blocks of the country.
The hartal was successful because of wide support from the trade unions.
But the British ignored the proposals. They preferred to deal with the Alliance, knowing that the left-wing movement would be hostile to their economic interests.
The communist insurgency of 1948 furnished the British with a spurious justification for using the ISA to arrest left-wing leaders.
These detentions weakened the Labour Party and Parti Rakyat, the two parties that had formed the Socialist Front, which won municipal elections in George Town and Malacca in 1961. Only Chee Khoon escaped the repressive ISA dragnet.
His dedication was legendary in helping poor patients at his clinic in Batu Road (renamed Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman) in Kuala Lumpur, where from the mid-1950s onwards he held court.
A busy medical practice did not prevent him from chairing the board of governors for something like 30 schools, besides serving in Methodist Church councils, and being a member of the University of Malaya’s council.
Education, upliftment of the poor, and healthcare were his lifelong concerns.
Not surprisingly, he was importuned by MCA to stand as a candidate in elections, but he declined because of his preference for representing the poor.
He won the Batu parliamentary and Kepong state seats on a Labour ticket in the 1964 general election, both by the slenderest of margins.
After Labour Party ranks were depleted through ISA detentions from the mid-1950s to the 1960s, Chee Khoon left to form Gerakan in 1968. He did this together with a band of academics, trade union leaders and private sector professionals.
It is Jomo’s thesis that the ISA detentions of left-wing leaders in the 1950s and ’60s rid the Malaysian body politic of popular leaders who were averse to using race and religion as platforms to garner public support.
Things went steadily downhill in this respect after the May 13 race riots in 1969.
The stroke Chee Khoon suffered in 1976, which forced him to withdraw from representational politics, symbolised the vitiation of multi-racial politics in the country.
Henceforth, it was race and, following that, religion that became the rallying cries of sectarian politicians.
The triumph of Chee Khoon’s Gerakan in the general election of 1969 was followed by the tragedy of its aftermath, which saw race-based and religion-suffused politics gain ascendancy.
In retrospect, Chee Khoon’s illness-compelled exit was a harbinger of things to come. – Free Malaysia Today
The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
