Guns and Communist Days

In 1959 my father, Sarawak Born in 1910, stood for election for the Sibu District Council and won. In those days, it was quite simple to get a nomination and it was even more basic to speak a few words in front of a large audience, to announce your intention for standing! Your reputation would say a lot and people would vote correctly without fear and favour. There were no arm bending tactics and no money politics.

Four years later, the politics of Sarawak changed drastically and my father was like any honest Chinese Sarawak living in Sarawak. 

The Sarawak United People's Party was a strong party but many of its members were ousted or asked to resign because they were left wing. My father was very flustered by the different opinions of left wing and right wing. He was a moderate man and followed Confucian and Taoist teachings as a scholar. He had been reading a lot of articles from Choon Chiew and was saddened by divisive partisans.

Although he was very much also an Anglophile, he remained loyal to his Chinese roots. He would not like to see the history of China and overseas Chinese obliterated by warfare and especially by guerilla warfare. In other words he was very much a pacifist.

Finding not many agreeable people in the party, he withdrew from active politics and did not want to stand for election again although his buddies like Stephen Yong and Ong Kee Hui continued to carry the Three Ring Banner. Besides he was already diagnosed with cardiac problems and his personal friend Dr. Watts was supportive of his decision to withdraw.

His last few years were very quiet years especially after Grandpa passed away in 1963. 

He felt as if he had no mature friend to discuss politics with according to an old time friend and fellow businessman. In those days not many could read and write well in both Chinese and English. My father was already missing his intellectual friends.

In 1963, he surrendered his gun obediently to the Police like all the other Chinese and he was saddened by the Communist Insurgency. All the warfare of China in the 1930's came back to him.

He said to my mother once, " There will be warlords and political gangs in Sarawak in the near future. Brothers against brothers, families against families, associations against associations. There will be betrayals in the darkest hours of the night. We might not even be able to trust our closest relatives."

My mother smiled and said, "Won't the Colonial Government take care of them?"

And he replied, "They will leave us high and dry and the natives of Sarawak and others are not ready to form a government."

My mother was worried because she was brought up to think like a traditional Chinese. A good government was one which was far away in the capital and people lived peacefully in the countryside. She did not like to see protests in the streets. Her ideal ruler was Dr. Sun Yat Sen with his Three Principles.

 My father passed away in 1965 and many of his predictions came true.