Tuesday, May 22, 2012

I could have been in the Police.

22.5.2012.

Tiong Meng  and Jane Chee  failed to turn up this morning for our regular threesome at S.I.G.C. so I joined 3 other Chinese golfers for 9 holes at the first nine. One was a former Deputy Chief Police Officer up north. And that was how we got to talking about this subject.

It was late '68 and the university Finals results  had been out several days. Those  days  these things got published in the New Straits Times. I was at the house and so was my late father, when Hasnan (later Datuk) the OCPD came in his official car and asked for me. He said he had received instructions from Bukit Aman to get me to attend an interview to become cadet ASPs in the Police, together with a group of fresh University of Malaya graduates. Getting graduates to join the force was the next new thing, then.

Unfortunately for me, my old man was home. The OCPD got to him first. And he rejected the offer  before I could say anything about it.  He said something about the police, although two of his brothers at that time were serving police officers.

It was only some years after  I had joined Felda that I learned that several graduates who were together with me in 1968 had in fact accepeted the same call to serve in the Police. Two of them were Rahim Nor, who later became IGP, and Said Awang, who became Director of the Special Branch, I can't remember the others now. Both figured prominently in the first Anwar Ibrahim case. 

I always wonder if I'd make a good Police Officer. But to-day I told the ex Police officer in our flight,  maybe not.  I said in my many subsequent jobs I had not always been the quiet one.

What could have been indeed.

................................................................................................,,,,,