The ministry of information, communication and culture, the National Archives and the Tunku Abdul Rahman Memorial will be putting on public display t44 personal items belonging to Tunku Abdul Rahman which were hidden in his safe which had not been opened for more than 30 years.

The ministry now considers these items to be 'national heritage' and estimated them at a value of RM400,000. There will be a special function at Rumah Merdeka in Alor Setar which was once owned by Tunku and was bought by the government and turned into the memorial.

The minister, Rais Yatim will officiate the function at 9.30 am on Feb 8, which is on the 107th birthday anniversary of Tunku.

And he will get all the attention by being allowed to make what many believe will be yet another of his inconsequential speech without any substance since none of what he has said in public has been turned into policies for implementation.

And the exhibition will be taken on a road tour throughout the country so more Malaysians will be able to see what these items are.

Unfortunately, what the minister and officers have neglected to admit and announce is how it was me who had exposed the safe and this was carried on the front-page of the Malay Mail on June 29, last year.

Barely three days later, Rais had some people prise open the safe whereupon they found the items.

They only invited me because I had met some of them at a function at Memorial Tunku and they also wanted to invite my relatives, But this only by sending them SMSes or making a phone call without sending official letters of invitation signed by their minister as a courtesy.

It is not that I care so much about getting some sort of recognition from the ministry if the find was not interesting or if it had not attracted considerable public attention.

The main issue of contention is how the safe had been discovered on the first day of the filming of my special documentary on Tunku called ‘The Residency Years’ and how Rais had not bothered to even send a courtesy note of thanks to me for having found the safe.

Actually, it was my sister, Rokiah who lived in the Residency after marrying Tunku's nephew. He said in passing how the safe had not been opened for so long because they did not have the keys or the combination.

I quickly seized the opportunity to highlight the discovery to the three major English language papers but only the Malay Mail chose to carry the story and on the front-page too and the discovery later became a media sensation with the cracking of the safe becoming prime-time news in the print and electronic media.

Neither me, my sister or any of Tunku's children were invited to witness the opening of the safe on July 2 last year. Yet, the deputy minister of the ministry had the audacity to tell Parliament that they had informed us two weeks earlier.

How can this be possible when the existence of the safe was only made known by the media only three days before they opened it? Did the deputy minister lie to Parliament and the Malaysian public then?

I find the ministry to be totally inconsiderate in not wanting to accept facts and to want only to give prominence to Rais who gets all the attention from the whole matter like he was the person who discovered the items in the safe.

If this is Rais' and the ministry's and hence the government's attitude towards those who discover important and interesting historical items for the country, then it will be very difficult for those who have other things of value to come forward because they know that their efforts and contributions are not appreciated.

They know they will be sidelined and only the minister and their officials get all the attention and adulation while the discoverer or discoverers are completely ignored.

If I had known how Rais and his ministry officials had wanted the attention themselves that much, I would not have taken the trouble to even talk about the unopened safe.

And there are few more interesting things on Tunku that I know of, one which is definitely going to be very interesting concerning his other property. But I am not interested in telling them, am I?