Nismilan, oh Nismilan !

Wed 29.4.2026

It's been almost a fortnight now that NS has witnessed the sudden, surprising  political catastrophe that seems worsening by the hour. As more make their feelings public in the wide open media, qualified, veritable, mischievous or otherwise, the muddy becomes even muddier. And as the Nismilan folks themselves would put it, some people are "scooping for fish in muddy water". Some are "diving while drinking the water". Which technically is suicidal.  But these are obviously "opportunists". Which in the case seems also suicidal.

Since the issue involves the highest Lawmaker in the State, who referees the quarrel now ?

As the scenario worsen, people may lose sight of what is at issue here, in the first place.

This was about the MB quickly making an official statement that his Government, and that should include the 14 UMNO Assemblymen now catching the spotlight, stands by the Yamtuan's decision in the Dewan Keadilan dan Adat, that the hitherto occupier of the Undang of Sungai Ujung's post's removal by his clan last year, had now been accepted, and that that person is therefore no longer the Undang.

With no evidence of consultations, either with the MB, or more importantly, with the UMNO Supreme Council, all 14 UMNO ADUNs called the press release of "withdrawing support for the MB", for his support of the Yamtuan. 

This seems like the "honour" of UMNO Assemblymen being tarnished by the MB for supporting the supreme constitutional leader of the state who supported the relevant clan in its own Luak Sungai Ujung issue,  which began last year. What investigation has the UMNO group done to drastically differ with the Dewan Keadilan's findings, if ever it has the authority and means of doing so ?

Talking about "honour", what about the coalition Pakatan Harapan's implicit working agreement among it's members ? This State Assembly was the PH Assembly. That's why UMNO Assemblymen were in the Government, including the State appointed "Senior Exco" as that man himself declared just now. That's why the DPM and a number of Ministers are from UMNO in the Federal Givernment.

If the UMNO Supreme Council accepts the stand of the 14 NS Assemblymen, then "honourably" the DPM and the other Ministers from UMNO should, like the Senior Exco in NS, resign from their posts, return their official cars, and vacate their offices. If they don't, let the rakyat see what "honour among thieves" is the rule of UMNO politicians. Anwar can survive in the 222-seat Parliament. UMNO has only 26.

As for the Undangs boycotting State functions, let them. State Laws don't require their signatures to come into effect, do they ? Maybe if the MB looks at the allowances guidelines, the Undangs will get in line ?

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Azmi anak Bangyong.

 Sun 26.4.2026

It was half-past-nine yesterday morning, when I decided to do some chores that needed urgent doing. I could have started from anywhere in the list of places that needed to be visited. Somehow I chose SIGC - to settle the club's monthly due.

That's when I met her in the cafeteria of the club.

She's now a PR in San Fransisco, USA, and has been there for more than 20 years. She's back for a short visit, and would be gone any day now, and we'd never meet again, most probably. And we wouldn't have met yesterday if I chose to come to the club later than I did.

Bangyong, her late father, was one of the many brothers I knew very well when we were in Bukit Temensu, our kampong. Our homes (my grandparents, in whose home we stayed) and Pak Ngah Omar and wife Mak Wo Sipah were next to each other on the Jalan Tampin main road.

Bangyong was Baharudin, a soldier who was married to Cik Gu Maimunah. One time, many years later, when I was already working, I was driving behind an army truck, and there was Bangyong at the back of the truck. I honked and waved, and he immediately spotted and recognized me and waved back.

Ita was the younger brother I went to TMS with. Jiman was an older brother who went to private school in Seremban and later married and settled in Seremban. Then there were the sisters I knew very well - Zizah, Maimun, Inah, and Jun.  Alas, all have left us.

My childhood in Bukit Temensu was until I was in Form 3, when I joined the RMC. But we were in a close society in Kampong Bukit Temensu.

Azmi is one of 2 sisters, but I don't know what happened to the other one. I'm told she\s in Seremban, somewhere. I'd met Azmi once before, when she came back from San Fransisco, also for a home visit, but that was many years ago. That was how I know then that she's in the USA.

Yesterday, it was instant recognition all round. Azmi also recognized Idah, and called her Kak Long straight away. She said she's Poad age, which I whatsapped to him later, and he concurred. I told her Poad went to study in Wisconsin, where he met Karim, another Bukit Temensu boy, who was doing his PhD at the same university there. Poad and I visited Karim's house when I went to attend Poad's graduation from the university in the late 80's.

Azmi said she remarried after the passing of her first husband, Hanif, who was Deputy Director of Education in Seremban,  which was 20 years ago. The new husband is an 80-year-old Irishman who had came with her to Malaysia a few times before. Syed Rahman later told me that Azmi had remarried more than once, which surprised me. Syed thought she could be teaching music now, something she had learned young. So that, and Hanif's good pension should take care of expenses, I guess.

Syed said there are a few houses Azmi can put up in Seremban, including her own house here, maintained by one of the relatives. She, like the rest,  can't go back to Bukit Temensu, because before Ita passed away he had decided, for all his surviving siblings, to dismantle the ancient grand Malay house that Pak Ngah Omar and Mak Wo Sipah called home, and sold the expensive "kayu ponak" materials to Salleh Md. Nor (Tan Sri, Dr.) who had sometime ago told me himself that he plans to rebuild the house in his late mother's kampong in Johol. Salleh grew up with his parents in the Istana Hinggap staff quarters, just next to this Mak Wo Sipah's house. That's how this buying the old vacant house came about.

I got Azmi to write down her address and phone number yesterday. "In case I go to the States again". Maybe I would.

It was all too short, and Azmi left first. But not before she also paid for our roti canai, which she signaled as she left the payment counter.

She's half-a-world away now, for the memory that's half-a-century old. But we  should treasure our common beginnings.

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Sacking counter-sacking

 Sat 25.4.2026

This NS circus has gone on for a week now, this sacking and counter-sacking. First it was the Yamtuan who sacked the Undang of Sungai Ujung (the name I'd picked to be my blog tag, because I stay just around the corner, nothing else). Then, obviously tit for tat, the sacked Undang said he was sacking the Yamtuan. When the MB stood by Yamtuan's earlier decision, all the other Undangs (Johol and Jelebu, and the unconfirmed Rembau one (actually there are now 3 claimants) plus the Tengku Besar Tampin, came out to scold the MB and promptly claimed to sack him, too.

Wo ! hang on ! This is a real circus now !

What happened to Procedure and Protocol ?

Is there Law in the Land, Minangkabau or whatever ?

Rais Yatim came out fast and furious, blurting history, complete with Minangkabau pronunciations he always claim to master. The history is fine, but the final solution he offered isn't final. Being quick on the draw is not the measure of sound judgement, and he should know, having burned his bridges before and then coming crawling back to the main theatre of turmoil. 

If I were the MB, and I'm not, I'll cut the Undang Sg. Ujung allowance, and his electicity and water supply. I'll get the LA to get the AG to interpret the law so that the right person can make the right decision, because the Adat is implemented by the Adat people, not the court.

On the "sacking" of the MB, the Undangs, and much less the Tengku Besar Tampin, have no authority. The MB won an election. Only the Dewan Undangan Negeri can remove him.

My grandfather was from the Suku Biduanda.

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Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik (18.9.1943 - 4.4.2026)

Thursday 9.4.2026.

He was one of us.

A group of us OP's ("Old Putras", former students of the Federation Military College, renamed Royal Military College in 1966) were having a meeting on Wednesday, 8.4.2026, at the  OPA Penthouse, Saujana Golf Resort, Subang. Of course we'd all heard about the deeply sad passing of one of our own, Tun Dr. Ling Liong Sik last Saturday. In fact that day (Wednesday) was his date of final interment. OP Aziz Rahman had suggested someone write an article on him. I  volunteered. 

History decides the greatness of public figures. Let it do that to Liong Sik. The accolades have poured in, and deservingly. We the OP's  want to look at it from our viewpoint. 

What has transpired in his time in this country is worth pondering, and deeply so.

Let me pick some facts of the case, as it were.

I didn't know him personally, but I've met him a few times, and our lives sort of "connected" in a number of ways. I was in "B" Company, like him. I went to see him and his Chief Secretary when I was the GM of a large transport company in the 90's. That Chief Secretary to the Transport Ministry, the late Dato' Dr. Mohd. Nor Abd. Ghani, was my first cousin. My brother, Dato' Mohd. Fadzil Mohd. Yunus had a house on the same road as Liong Sik's at Damansara Height. I mention this because, of course, I visited my brother often at his Jalan Setiabakti 3, Damansara Height address.  Very much later another brother, Dr. Mohd. Fakharuddin Mohd. Yunus, also first reported for duty at the Penang GH., as Dr. Ling Liong Sik did earlier.  And as an active member of UMNO at that time, I followed the upheavals of the politics of BN in which Liong Sik was a deeply-involved stalwart.   

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. Then he went to Singapore for his MBBS, was posted as a doctor at Penang General Hospital and served for 2 years. In 1968 went into private practice in Butterworth, on the mainland.

Those locations were well-spread, geographically. 

In the same year (1968) he joined the MCA.

The record says he was in FMC Port Dickson for 3 years, in Forms V to Upper 6, was given the Regimental Number 200727, and put in B Company. While there he once attended the "Outward Bound" course at OBS, and Hank says he was one of the only two who got "Honours". Passing out of College, he was admitted to the Singapore University Medical Faculty as an 18-year-old undergraduate. 

10 years into MCA, and he entered the 5th General Elections of 1978 as a Parliamentry candidate for Mata Kuching, Penang. He won, and thus began his remarkable career in active Malaysian politics, although  his Parliamentary seat later moved all the way to Labis, Johor.  That career lasted  26 remarkable years, through  6 GE's, (1978, 1982, 1986, 1990 , 1995 & 1999). In Malaysian politics, that's incredibly reselient.

I say a remarkable political career, because in the process, among many other things that he did, without everyone even today realising it, "Budak Boy" Ling Liong Sik became, up to now, the only Chinese Prime Minister of Malaysia, in 1988 ! Check that fact.

The 1987 chaos in UMNO with it's eventual dissolution and the break-away Semangat 46 formation, all brought to the unavoidable, historic appointment of Budak Boy Ling Liong Sik as the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Sure, he stayed  for 12 whole days only (4.2.1988 - 16.2.1988) before handing the post back to Tun Dr. Mahathir, but he could have kept it, and Malaysian history would have been different today. Maybe it was because both got their MBBS from the same University . 

Anyone else would have kept that PM chair !

The special camaraderie that FMC infused then (I say "then" because it's gone now)  must have been in the heart of Liong Sik, and must have saved the country from further chaos at that time, because after 12 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  chosen as  OP of the Year.

Some birth dates are equally remarkable to look at..

He was a doctor at 23.

He was the Parliamentary Secretary of the Local Government and Federal Territories at 33.

He was the Deputy Information Minister at 35.

He was the Deputy Finance Minister II at 39.

He was the  Deputy Education Minister at 42.

He was the MCA President at 43 and kept it for 17 years until age 60.

He was the Transport Minister at 43 and kept it for 17 years.

He was the Prime Minister at 45. (Tun Dr. Mahathir was PM at 55).

Finally, the country's highest award, the Tunship, was conferred at age 61.

At the helm of MCA, Liong Sik quietly did to it what the others since have undone - making the party more "centralised" by adding English-educated members to its central working groups. FMC especially took great pains to uphold the racial integration in the English-medium education  framework. It made it easier for the UMNO ground supporters to accept MCA into the upper echelons of the BN leadership. Liong Sik himself spoke in moderate and civilised tone, compared to the firebrands of today. When I met him with our operational issues, which obviously he would not know in detail, he never interrupted the presentation, very unlike some other exasperating UMNO Ministers that I had met in the course of my work.

Out of the active limelight, 2 significant court cases might be considered to have marred his distinguished public service. The first one was in 2010 when he was charged with his role in the Port Klang Free Trade Zone land case. The second one was in 2015 when Najib sued him for libelous remarks about his (Najib's) failure in the Finance Ministry. However, let it be put on record that the tough Old Putra  emerged unscathed in both cases. He was acquitted in the first one, and  got costs from Najib who withdrew his suit.

My little piece does no justice for Liong Sik.  His breed was rare. 

But he was one of us.

Rest In Peace, brother OP. 

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