Thursday 9.4.2026.
I attended the FMC1952-1966 Intake Committee meeting at the the OPA Penthouse, Saujana Golf Resort, Subang, yesterday. Of course we'd all heard about the sad passing of one of our own, Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik last Saturday. In fact yesterday was his date of final interrment. Aziz, at the meeting, suggested someone write an article on him. I just touched his shoulder (I was sitting next to him) and he said it out that I'd just volunteered !
68 long years ago, 15-year old Ling Liong Sik, the young Foochow boy, who was born in Kuala Kangsar but attended the King Edward VII School in Taiping, joined the Federation Military College in Port Dickson, NS. He was given the Regimental Number 200727, and put into "B" Company.
The record says he stayed for 3 years, in Forms V to Upper 6, then was admitted into the Singapore University Medical Faculty as an 18-year-old undergraduate. He graduated with an MBBS in 1966.
He was posted as a doctor in Penang, but stayed for only a couple of years. He went into private practice in Butterworth. But he also joined the MCA political party the same year. 10 years into MCA, and he entered the General Elections of 1978 as a Parliamentry candidate for -----, Penang. He won, and thus began his new career in active Malaysian politics that lasted for 26 remarkable years.
Remarkable, because in the process, among many other things that he went through, without everyone even today realising it, "Budak Boy" Ling Liong Sik became the only Chinese Prime Minister in 1988 !
The special camaraderie that FMC infused then (I say "then" because it's gone now) that must have been in the heart of Liong Sik, must have saved the country from further chaos at that time, because after 10 days he handed back the Premiership to the New UMNO. The constitutional turmoil must be read up in another story. But suffice it to say that Ling Liong Sik remained true to FMC upbringing. The alma mater didn't forget. In 1996, as OPA President, he was also chosen as OP of the Yerar.
(to be continued)
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