Saturday,
8th December 2018
By TAN SRI JOHAN JAAFFAR
It is always fascinating to read the story of a
boy, born literally in the “wilderness”, becoming “somebody” one day. And he is
no ordinary “somebody” – he is an embodiment of what human achievement is all
about. It is also a story about dedication, tenacity and commitment. This is an
incredible book of an Iban boy who made his mark as an exemplary government officer,
later on as a politician, in fact a minister, and then a leader of a corporate
entity.
I must confess that I find this book
exhilarating. I have read many memoirs, autobiographies and biographies. It is
a genre that is always high on my list of reading priorities. I am moved and
inspired by some and many of these works remain etched in my memory for years.
Nostalgia excites. As we get older, memories
come flashing back in bits and pieces, like images from old movies, full of
drama, laughter and even tears. And there will be family members, friends,
teachers and those who we met along the way. All of us have pleasant and not so pleasant encounters with people we met
in our lives. These memories come cascading down, which need to be recorded
before we lose them all.
As a journalist I have met many individuals,
leaders in various disciplines, legends some of them, monumental figures in
their own right. I have traveled the world over. I have dined with cannibals
(literally), conversed and interviewed corporate shakers and movers, even the
most ruthless despots and alleged terrorists. I have met the good, the bad and
the ugly among the so-labelled “leaders”. I had conversations with Nelson
Mandela, J.P. Kalam, Vaclav Havel, Margaret Thatcher, Suharto, to name a few,
even having breakfast with the notorious Gulbuddin Hekmateyar, leader of the
Hisbi Islamic faction in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in the spring of 1989, now
high on the list of the most wanted terrorists by the Americans. I have read
their writings and writings about them. Some I liked, some I hated.
But literature about people never fail to
amaze me. I find it interestingto see the number of memoirs in the book shops
today. It is an industry by itself. I was in the UK recently, reading Becoming by the former First Lady of the
United States, Michele Obama, and a biography of one of the most daring women
journalists, Marie Colvin, entitled In
Extremis by Lindsay Hilsum.
Everyone has his or her own story to tell. If
you think ordinary folks cannot write memoirs, think again. Ordinariness can
even be a virtue. Who would imagine that a story of a teacher living in New
York could become a best-seller. No kidding. The late Frank McCourt is one. Frank made his mark with his Angela’s Ashes published in 1996. He was
born in New York in 1930 to Malachy and Angela McCourt. It is not easy to raise
children in Depression-era America. The family moved back to Limerick, Ireland,
in 1934. Things got worse. Frank’s father left them, the mother had to work
hard to feed the children, three of them died of diseases related to
malnutrition. They lived in a house that they shared with rats. Frank went back
to the States, joined the army and later became a teacher.
Angela’s Ashes was a massive hit when it was
published. Gripping poverty was the theme. He later came out with ‘Tis (1999) and Teacher Man (2006). It doesn’t matter that even his mother has
doubts about the authenticity of the events he narrated in the book. He was
denounced, in his own words, “from the hill, pulpit and barstool” for
disgracing the good name of Limerick and Ireland.
But then, he started a whole new genre in
memoir writing – “misery memoirs”. There is an avalanche of books under that
genre now.
This book, From
Longhouse to Capital:Recollections, certainly is not in the tradition of
McCourt’s type of memoirs. It is in a class of its own. This is a story of the
first Iban to graduate with a university degree, the first to have an MA, then
an MBA. He has done his people proud, his country even prouder. This isn’t Angela’s Ashes for sure!
I was given the book to read, with a little
note attached, and subsequently had a phone conversation with the author who
requested me to launch the book. I am honoured of course.
This book is written by Tan Sri Datuk Amar Leo
Moggie, no ordinary bloke in Malaysian politics and the corporate circle. I
read the book and I was fixated. To say that I enjoyed the book is
an under statement. In fact I find the book fascinating. It is well written, too
well written. The author in his preface claims that this is merely a book of
recollections, it is not even a memoir, but let the readers and history judge,
for the difference between a memoir, recollections or autobiography is
demarcated by a thin line. Let’s not get into a debate about semantics. This is
indeed a memoir, by one of the best minds the country has ever produced. Or
call it recollections, for all I know, it is a collection of memories of an
individual about his life, moments and events, both public and private, that
took place in his lifetime. This book could have been titled The Life and Times of Leo Moggie!
His granddaughter, Didi, did the right thing
when she pestered Tan Sri Leo Moggie to write his own book after reading Sidney
Poitier’s Life Beyond Measure: Letters to
My Great-Granddaughter. Who could forget him, a Black actor who carried a
movie single-handedly on his shoulders, something unthinkable back in 1963,
when he played the role of Homer Smith an itinerant worker, in Lilies of the Field.For that he won the
Best Actor award at the Oscars, the first for a Black actor. In 1967 he was
Virgil Tibbs, in the movie In The Heat of
the Night, a devastatingly frank movie about racism in America.
A black
Philadelphia policeman suspected of murder has to face a racist police chief in
the form of Rod Steiger in small town Sparta, Mississippi is a tough role to
play. In the same year he was playing Mark Thackeray in the hit movie, To Sir, With Love. Those three were
monumental films that defined not only the actor but about race in the UK and
the US during those years.
In his memoir The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, Poitier wrote:
“I have no wish to play the
pontificating fool, pretending that I’ve suddenly come out with the answers to
all life’s questions. Quite the contrary, I began this book as an exploration,
an exercise in self-questing. In other words, I wanted to find out as I looked
back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I’ve
done at measuring up to the values I myself have set.”
I can’t ignore those words by Poitier as I
read Tan Sri’s book. Yes, this book is not trying to answer “all life’s
questions” but more like “an exploration”, even an exercise in “self-questing”
and looking back at “a long complicated life”, and how much the author has done
to measure up to the values he has set for himself.
 |
| Tan Sri Leo Moggie |
This is no ordinary book for what the author
went through is not an ordinary journey. This book is so laden with facts and
events that one wonders at the author’s incredible memory, as in his preface,
he confesses that he never kept a diary. What you are reading in this book are
events arranged chronologically, flawless to a point, narrating every aspect of
his involvement from his schooling and university days to his time working as a
pegawai kerajaan (government officer),
and later his involvement in politics for 30 years.
I guess having a former
history teacher as his significant other half, Puan Sri Datin Amar Elizabeth,
would certainly help in reminding him of the need to pen a feel-good memoir to
savour a nearly forgotten past.
The entire book is so well structured and well
documented that it is more than just about the author, it is also part-history
of his community, his political party, his state and his country. The personal
story of the author intertwined with that of the nation. It is therefore not an
exaggeration to say this is a book that needed to be written, published and
read. Tan Sri Leo Moggie’s documentation of events, especially the ones that
mattered to the nation in which he was involved directly or otherwise, is
superb. He was in the thick of things at two of the crucial ministries during
its formative years, that of the Ministry of Energy, Telecommunications and
Post and the Ministry of Works.
Those were the days when the Multimedia
Super-Corridor was mooted, the Bakun Dam (with all its controversies) was
built, the North-South and East-West Highways were constructed and the Kuala
Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) was designed and built.
I must say, I can claim a stake in Tan Sri’s ministry’s
foray into information technology. I was one of the first individuals
appointed as a board member of the newly
created Multimedia Development Council (MDC, which later became MDec)under the
leadership of the late Tan Sri Othman Yeop Abdullahin 1996. Yes, it was
uncharted territory back then. Dr Mahathir Mohamad was in his first tour as the
Prime Minister. No one was sure about the river of knowledge and garbage (the
Internet) and how we were going to deal with that.
But MDC was needed to spearhead the MSC
initiatives. To have an MDC office among palm trees to push forward one of the
boldest and most audacious multimedia initiatives the world has ever
knownwasn’t easy. You could hear the sneering by sceptical Malaysians and
neighbours. What were we trying to prove? Dr Mahathir, as stated by Tan Sri
Leo, seized the visionary implication of the futurist Kenichi Ohmae when he
presented a proposal on “The Making of a Malaysian Miracle.” A visionary that Dr
Mahathir is, the MSC was his child till he left office in 2003.
Thanks to the minister at the helm, we did remarkably
well, considering. We had a good head start. But sadly, as pointed out by Tan
Sri in this book, the MSC initiatives were derailed at some point because those
who were entrusted to spearhead the MSC was thinking more about real estate
development rather than creating our own Silicon Valley. Some of the ambitious
projects, like the E-Village, stalled.
But more importantly, one must look at Tan
Sri’s early years as pegawai daerah.
His first posting at Kapit in February 1966 was a real eye opener. Back then,
Sarawak was hardly three years in the Malaysian federation. Backwardness in all
aspects of development was the feature. For Tan Sri serving in Kapit, though not in the
district he was born, was “balik kampung”, and more so “giving back
to society.” He was uprooted from his village early in life. But those years
serving the people in such areas brought awareness and a sense of pride. He
gained another experience though, leading the Borneo Literature Bureau in 1968.
But the juiciest part of the book is about politics.
I will not dwell on that, read those chapters for yourself, and you’ll
understand how politics have impacted upon the author, for better or otherwise.
Thirty years is a long time in politics. Rightly or wrongly, politicians affect
us in more ways than one. Politics is the game of the impossible. And politics
is not for the weak-hearted. I am no judge in Tan Sri Leo’s political
adventures or his trials and tribulations in that vocation. He was heading a
party (SNAP) that became part of the political construct of his state and
certainly had its bearing at the national level.
I believe he is a man of integrity and places
good governance above all else in politics. If at all there is honesty and
goodness in politics, Tan Sri Leo is an example. I have no intention of making
a bold stroke of generalisation here, but politicians are mostly driven by
self-interest more than anything else. The culture of politics is one that can
be horrendously flawed. One can easily be sucked into the vortex of misnomer
and inappropriateness. In short, power corrupts. But not all politicians are
bad, some are excellent, but political culture is changing the good to become
bad.
I support this statement in the book,
“The public want our
politicians to worry more about improving the country’s corruption perception
index or ensuring our poverty rate that actually has gone down and the gap
between the rich and the poor that has narrowed rather than widened. Economic
inequality is a recipe for disunity.”
I guess that is Tan Sri’s guiding principle as
a politician.
In rural areas like Sarawak, as pointed out by
the author, good educational facilities
and basic infrastructure such as roads, potable water and electricity, are
still important. In most cases pembangunan,
as we understand it, is taken for granted. There are politicians who are
saying, let’s move beyond politik pembangunan.
In many rural areas in Sabah and Sarawak, solar-based electricity is still in
place. Even then, the budget allocated to provide basic infrastructure for the rakyat can go astray.
Tan Sri Leo Moggies gives credit where credit
is due. He is thankful even to the longboat drivers who took him places in
Kapit – the likes of Balang, Hassan and Said. These unsung heroes were merely
names in the registry of government servants. But to Tan Sri Leo Moggie, “people like them were indispensable
to the functioning administration of rural Sarawak in the 1960s.”
He provides names in this book. He criticises.
He is frank and never minces words. But he does it with style and finesse. He
doesn’t shy away from criticising policies that he feels are not beneficial to
the people. He is critical about the state of racial relations in the country.
He is concerned about the ugly head of religious extremism that is surfacing.
He has reasons to worry about the divisiveness in current Malaysian society. Thus
he is fond of his school days back at
BatuLintang. There was no “Us”and “Them” back then – they were all students of
different races.
Perhaps, that is reflected in the school song;
It’s a far cry from Kuching to
Brunei
For Dayaks, Ibans, Dusuns and
Malays
And for Kenyahs, Muruts,
Kayans far away
Yet all of us are gathered
here today.
The fact that he remembers those lyrics even
today and how name after name of persons of different races are reflected in
the book speaks volumes of his view about the idea of muhibbah and perpaduan
for a country like ours.
Tan Sri Leo Moggie has seen it all. I believe
this is a work in progress. There are perhaps many more recollections thathe
needs to record later. This is indeed a good start. Tan Sri has woven a
narrative worthy of attention. With self-conscious understanding that, in an
era of divisive politics and political correctness, to tell the truth isn’t easy
for one can easily be misconstrued for the most harmless of statements. But Tan
Sri Leo Moggie is not seeking controversy here. There is nothing controversial
in fact. But telling things as it is, the Leo Moggie way, in such erudite
recollections is a sure-fire way to win hearts and minds.
This book of frank, jubilant and kaleidoscopic
recollections by a towering personality needs to be read by all
Malaysians.
Thank you.
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