COMMENT The release yesterday of Aung San Suu Kyi by the Burmese junta and the jubilation her freedom must have brought to millions of her supporters in that unfortunate country prompts thoughts on the what-might-have-been in our country in May 1969.

This was when, in the immediate aftermath of the riots of May 13 that year, a shell-shocked Tunku Abdul Rahman was propositioned by top military officers: they said they would run Malaysia, put things in order, and then return the country to civilian rule.

tunku abdul rahman 290809Distraught over the bloodshed, mainly in Kuala Lumpur, and sporadic other parts of the country, the Tunku, who once boasted that he was the happiest prime minister in the world, sought opinions from a circle of advisers close to him.

One voice - that of newly reappointed Home Affairs Minister Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman - was unequivocally clear: he told the Tunku any cession of power to the military would be a one-way street. Don’t hope to get the blessed thing (democracy) back again, cautioned Ismail.

The Tunku, no great devotee of democracy (under him in 1960, the dreaded Internal Security Act was promulgated) but a democrat nevertheless, quickly forgot that the military had approached him to offer help to restore normalcy.  

History is more apt to highlight what its luminaries did than what they advised against doing. Activism trumps passivity in the historical imagination.  

On the road to Mandalay

It would be interesting to know who among the circle close to General Ne Win, the strongman who led the coup in 1962 that placed Burma under rule by a junta that lasts till today, might have voiced doubts about the move to launch a coup.

It is certain the secretive Ne Win would have consulted, though the circle of the consulted would have been small.     

NONEBut as a rule, the officer corps is inured to conformity than to dissent. Once the numero uno makes a decision, all hands must be on deck. That is why the wisdom of democracy holds that the military must always defer to the civilian leadership.

Burma’s military junta, by releasing Suu Kyi, has sent a grey shaft of light skittering across the subjugated mass of that country.   

Whether that shaft would become “like the dawn that comes up like thunder” – to borrow from one of Rudyard Kipling’s more resonant poems (‘On the Road to Mandalay’), is something we in Malaysia would wish for even as we applaud our narrow escape from military rule and salute the memory of the man who forestalled it.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.