Tan Sri Datuk Amar (Dr) Ong Kee Hui. (Memorials).
1914-2000The notice in the local press read:
The cortege will leave No. 12, Taman Liong Seng, Rock Road, Kuching for the Sarawak United People's Party Headquarters at 1:00 PM on Thursday, 20th April 2000 for friends and party members to pay their last respects until 1:00 P.M on Friday, 21st April 2000 when it will leave for St Thomas's Cathedral, Jalan McDougall, Kuching for a Funeral Service to be held at 2:00 P.M on the same day.
This simple notice encapsulates what were for Tan Sri the two most important aspects of his life other than his family: politics and religion--in politics, his chairmanship of the Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP), and in religion, his conversion to Christianity.
The history of Tan Sri's forebearers in Sarawak began in 1846 when the Brooke regime was still in its infancy. In that year, his great grandfather, Ong Ewe Hai (18301889), moved to Sarawak seeking fame and fortune. He established himself as a merchant and successfully bid for the lucrative opium, alcohol, and gambling monopolies. In time, Ewe Hai became Rajah Charles Brooke's confidant and adviser on Chinese Affairs and the Kapitan China of Sarawak. Ewe Hai built the customary ancestral home of an influential Chinese family, now a back-packers' hostel. Ong Ewe Hai's son, Ong Tiang Swee (1864-1950), ably developed the family business interests and expanded his father's roles in society, becoming Kapitan China, President of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and one of the first two Chinese nominated to the Sarawak Council Negri (Legislative Council) in 1937. Tiang Swee's second son, Ong Kwan Hin (1896-1982), the father of Tan Sri, had an avid interest in Chinese temples, on which he became a recognized authority . He also carried on his father's import/export business and became Kapitan China of the Hokkien community.
For the first sixteen years of his life, Tan Sri lived in the ancestral home built by his grandfather, in an extended family in which Confucian values prevailed. His grandfather, Tiang Swee, was treated with deference by everyone in the family. He had a profound effect on his grandson and Tan Sri dedicated Volume One of his memoirs to him, writing that his grandfather's footprints had guided and inspired him throughout his life.
Tan Sri won a scholarship to cover his secondary education in Singapore and subsequently studied agriculture in Malaya, where he graduated with a diploma. During this period, his views on the world, justice, and religion began to take form. In June 1935, he joined the Department of Agriculture as an agricultural officer. His subsequent travels exposed him to the many ethnic groups and cultures of Sarawak, which later proved useful in his political career. On 14 September 1937, he married Wee Bee Siok, the daughter of a successful banker and businessman, in a traditional Chinese ceremony. However, the Japanese Occupation altered their lives irrevocably. In Kuching, Tan Sri and his wife, together with several other members of Ong Tiang Swee's extended family moved into the relative safety of Ong Tiang Swee's estate a few miles outside Kuching. As the manufacturing and animal husbandry interests of Ong Tiang Swee were essential, the Japanese authorities allowed them to continue relatively undisturbed. Also Ong T iang Swee's appointment to the Japanese Ken Sanjikai (Prefectural Advisory Council) gave the family some degree of protection. Tan Sri resigned from the Department of Agriculture as soon as the Japanese Occupation began and turned to helping his grandfather. A growing shortage of rice as the Occupation continued motivated his applying for land and seeking self-sufficiency by growing padi and other crops. With helpers, he tried traditional Dayak slash and burn farming, but with limited success, as he had not anticipated the difficulties involved. Giving up this venture, Tan Sri returned to helping his grandfather.
After the initial excitement of liberation, Tan Sri resumed to his pre-war duties with the Department of Agriculture. Thirty-two years old on 1 July 1946 when Sarawak was ceded to Britain, Tan Sri concurred with his grandfather's view that Sarawak needed the resources of Britain for its post-war reconstruction. Cession would, he knew, introduce jus soli to Sarawak, so that all those born in Sarawak, irrespective of their ethnicity, would be recognized as citizens, whereas the Sarawak Constitution of 1941 deemed all Chinese as aliens, even if they had been born in Sarawak.
In the post-war world, Tan Sri quickly became dissatisfied with government service due to what he viewed as unfavorable conditions of service for local personnel when compared with those of expatriate officers. Leaving the Department of Agriculture in November 1948, he turned to banking and business in his father-in-law's business "empire". This exposed Tan Sri to business-oriented organizations such as the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Hokkien Association, as well as to that bastion of Kuching social life, the Sarawak Turf Club. The British administration nominated him to the Council Negri in 1955. Being involved in governing proved irresistible and when the first direct elections were introduced in 1956, Tan Sri was an eager contender. He was elected to the Kuching Municipal Council, but did not achieve his aim of becoming its first elected President, becoming, instead, its second on 1 December 1959. However, he was one of five unofficial members selected for the Supreme Council (Cabinet), w here he became privy to the inner workings of government.
An electoral system requires political parties and he, together with a group of colleagues, inaugurated Sarawak's first political party, the SUPP, on 12 June 1959. He was elected Chairman, a position he held until retiring on 25 September 1982. The original concept of a multi-racial party was overridden by a preponderance of Chinese members and the subsequent formation of other political parties along ethnic lines, following the model of the Alliance government in Malaya. The government gave Tan Sri tacit encouragement to form the party, but this turned to distrust as the extent of communist infiltration unfolded. Indeed, the Sarawak Communist Organisation (SCO) viewed the SUPP in its early years as its open front political party. On the other hand, Tan Sri and his Secretary-General, Stephen Yong Kuet Tze, held that the more radical party members needed a political outlet and could be controlled by the moderates. It was a classic case of mutual dependence. The SCO needed a front of moderate leaders at that st age and the moderate leadership needed the support of its more radical members, as they commanded a large following in the party.
Tan Sri felt strongly that Sarawak should be a completely independent state and not be subsumed within the federation of Malaysia. For economic viability, he preferred a loose federation with Brunei and North Borneo, a solution also preferred by the British administration in the late 1950s. As complete independence was also the aim of the party's SCO and radical elements, the SUPP maintained this aim until the late 1960s, undeterred by government pressure, the Brunei uprising, subsequent government purges of communist elements, the Sultan of Brunei's unwillingness to join in a federation of the Borneo states, and the integration of Sarawak within Malaysia. In a replay of 1946, when no referendum was held on the cession of Sarawak to Britain, his and the SUPP's battle for a referendum on the formation of Malaysia also came to nought. Pressure from Indonesia resulted in a United Nations team assessing public attitudes to the formation of Malaysia and its controversial findings were deemed adequate by Malaya and Britain for the Malaysia plan to be implemented. For Tan Sri, any dreams of Sarawak achieving complete independence finally ended in the 1963 elections. Although his party won 27 per cent of the local Council seats, it was outmanoeuvred in the formation of political alliances, so that the SUPP had only five of the thirty-six seats in the Council Negri and none whatsoever in the Supreme Council. Alone on the opposition bench, the SUPP representatives were powerless to block the vote in the Council Negri in favor of Sarawak joining Malaysia. As he wrote after witnessing the official ceremony on 16 September 1963, the day Sarawak became a state within the Federation of Malaysia, "Fifty years old and my dreams shattered".
One observer held that Tan Sri had national ambitions, and these showed themselves when the SUPP nominated him to the Federal House of Representatives (Dewan Rayat) in 1964. This he welcomed, viewing it as the party's role to ensure that the special rights negotiated for Sarawak not be eroded. He attended the first session of the second parliament, 18-22 May 1964 and as an experienced speaker, quickly began to build up contacts with other Federal Ministers. Although the SUPP was effectively sidelined in Sarawak, when Singapore was expelled from the Federation of Malaysia on 9 August 1965, Tan Sri and his party seized the opportunity to call for a plebiscite on whether Sarawak should stay within Malaysia. The Sarawak Alliance and the Federal Government quickly turned this down with Tunku Abdul Rahman saying it was his intention that "we should remain for ever and ever together."
Gradually, pragmatism prevailed and prior to the 1970 Sarawak elections, the SUPP top leaders decided that to be effective the party must be prepared to form alliances with non-socialist political parties to become part of the next Sarawak government. A very astute Federal Government encouraged this move, which would remove an effective opposition party from Sarawak politics, and Tun Razak, who was to become the Prime Minister of Malaysia on 22 September 1970, personally encouraged Tan Sri to 'join the establishment". Needless to say, this was much to the chagrin of the SUPP's left wing members, who felt that their party's socialist ideology was being sacrificed to expediency and the personal ambitions of its leaders. But the moderates met this challenge and SUPP became part of the Sarawak Government following the 1970 elections.
Tun Razak personally invited Tan Sri to join the federal cabinet as the Minister of Technology, Research and Local Government. This offer was accepted immediately and Tan Sri, together with his wife and youngest daughter, moved to Kuala Lumpur in February 1971. Thereafter the remainder of his political career was in the Dewan Rayat. His subsequent posts were Federal Minister of Local Government and Housing and Federal Minister of Science, Technology, and Environment. Showing how far he had moved in his political thinking from his early admiration of the Swiss system, which he referred to as "Democracy at Work at the Grass Roots Level", in July 1971 Tan Sri announced that the federal government had decided to abolish elected local authorities in West Malaysia. He said that it was redundant to have a tier of representative government at that level. Following his lead, five years later the Sarawak legislature passed a bill that replaced elected local councils with government nominated councils.
Tan Sri appreciated the trappings of power and was grateful that the Tunku and Tun Razak accepted the SUPP into the government fold. For the federal government, allocation of a Ministry to a politician from Sarawak had political merits. There were frictions, but the SUPP remained firmly in the Alliance fold and an opposition voice was thus muted. For Tan Sri, after ten years in the Dewan Rayat, his term of office as a Federal Minister came to an end in April 1982 with the dissolution of parliament prior to parliamentary elections. As the SUPP selected other candidates, whom the party considered more likely to be elected, Tan Sri was not a contestant for a seat. Nor was he put forward for a seat in the Senate.
Tan Sri's main interest from 1971 onward had been in his federal ministries and he had become increasingly detached from Sarawak politics. He did not seek re-election as Chairman of the SUPP in 1982. Tan Sri was now sixty-eight years old and he settled into a comfortable retirement, developing some business interests, but not always with success. Three years later, his wife, Wee Bee Siok, died on 15 May 1985. Their married life had been very traditional, with Bee Siok keeping in the background, yet quietly giving him support and encouragement. They had eight children. Later, a longstanding friendship was renewed, leading to his second marriage in the Protestant church to Chong Guek Siew.
Under financial pressure, Tan Sri's situation was eased somewhat by securing a forestry license in the latter part of his life. Having converted to Christianity, religion became increasingly important. Towards the end of his life, he had two ambitions. One was to develop his small "beach house" at Buntal as a weekend and holiday retreat. He enjoyed converting the dilapidated kampung house into a habitable dwelling, smiling with amusement when it was compared with the grandiose buildings of other politicians. His second ambition was to write his memoirs, on which he began work sometime in 1993. Although he underestimated the amount of work involved, the first volume was published in 1998, by which time the debilities of old age were taking hold. He produced a few chapters of the second volume before his death and his old political party, the SUPP, delegated completion to one of its members, as a tribute to its first and longest serving Chairman.
But what of the man himself? He had the ability to gain the confidence and friendship of both sides in most situations. As Chairman of the SUPP, which was known to the Special Branch as an open front for the communists, he retained the confidence, albeit sometimes guarded, and friendship of the British, and later, Malaysian administrations. Tan Sri was a "Chardonnay" socialist from a privileged background and enjoyed the trappings of power and success. But he managed to retain the support of a largely left-wing party membership, even when the SUPP joined the ruling Alliance. His astuteness in politics is unquestionable, as he, together with Stephen Yong Kuet Tze, managed to survive challenges from both right- and left-wing party members. His speedy acceptance by the Federal Government is also a tribute to his astuteness. But he was less successful in achieving his ultimate ambition, that of a completely independent Sarawak, an ambition he was pragmatic enough to put aside after Malaysia became fait accompli. Similarly, socialistic dogma was put aside. Tan Sri upheld the SUPP image of its members not being subject to corruption, although a Nelsonian ability to neither see nor hear what he did not wish to see or hear applied where other politicians were concerned.
In later private life, he was a rather lonely man. He does not seem to have built up very close friendships, having become remote as a Minister, which was even felt by his extended family on occasion. One of his children once remarked that he was more successful in politics than in bringing up a family, indicative of this remoteness. In his later life, his religious group tended to become the major focus of his social activities. Undoubtedly some of his happiest moments were in the late 1940s, when he was building his Shangri-La, a Minangkabau style house at the Twelfth Mile, and in the late 1950s when establishing the SUPP. Dying at the age of 86, his epitaph may well read "He had a few good innings, playing the great game with some finesse". (Vernon L. Porritt, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia)
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| Author: | Porritt, Vernon L. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Borneo Research Bulletin |
| Article Type: | Obituary |
| Geographic Code: | 9MALA |
| Date: | Jan 1, 2001 |
| Words: | 2558 |
| Previous Article: | Dato Sri William Nais. (Memorials). |
| Next Article: | Tan Sri Datuk Amar Stephen Yong Kuet Tze. (Memorials). |
| Topics: | |