Sower Syed Husin poised to reap harvest

“It is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest,” noted Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace laureate, in remarks made at the award’s presentation in 1952.

An exception to this piece of existential realism is set to be granted Syed Husin Ali, 75, indefatigable political and social activist whose book ‘Memoir Perjuangan Politik’ (Reminiscences of a Political Activist) was launched last night amid arias of praise - and what is certain to be more gratifying - burgeoning suspicion that vindication is at hand.

The latter was what gave the occasion an ethereal feel as the revenant ghosts of struggles past - Ishak Muhammad (Pak Sako), Ahmad Boestamam and Burhanudin al-Helmy - were a palpable presence among a crowd of about 500 who had braved evening thunderstorms and traffic jams.

Speaker after speaker who preceded Syed Husin at the Shah Alam Convention Centre heaped gratitude and praise on him such that when it was the memoirist’s turn at the podium, the object of the eulogies let on that he had fairly wondered whether he was still alive.

“Normally, such praise is reserved for the dead,” quipped the senator, who a year ago relinquished his position as deputy president of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), the party that is result of the fusion in 2002 between Syed Husin’s longtime object of political allegiance, Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM), and the initial vehicle of the reformasi movement that had its start in the travails of Anwar Ibrahim, Parti Keadilan Nasional (PKN).

Opposition had been strong from the Abim faction and assorted others of the initial entity (PKN) to the merger, but Anwar Ibrahim, serving time on trumped-up charges of sodomy and corruption, sent strong word from Sungai Buloh that the new entity, PKR, should be birthed.

Yesterday from Anwar, who delivered the keynote address at the launch, came renewed explanation for the merger for which he had been resolute, to the pained befuddlement of the Abim faction whose aversion for the implied atheism of socialist political ideology is renowned.

“I wanted to blend the movement for justice represented by Parti Keadilan Nasional with its broad-based support with the historic struggles for social and political equity represented by Parti Rakyat Malaysia,” explained the PKR supremo and Pakatan Rakyat chair.

Book serves as ‘manifesto’ for PKR

With that rationale from a nimble political strategist, it was not hard to see why Anwar had directed PKR to convert the occasion of the launch of ‘Memoir Perjuangan Politik’ into a test of ideological rectitude for party members.

“I told them reading it was a prerequisite for selection as candidates in the general election,” he said, only half in jest.

“I read the book a month ago and felt that it is a work that should be valued by all our members,” he revealed.

“I instructed the party to get behind this launch because this is a book that testifies to the appropriateness and worthiness of our struggles,” he elaborated.

“Should we triumph by taking Putrajaya soon, this book would serve as manifesto and as corrective to our struggles,” he asserted.

Before Anwar spoke, PKR vice-president Tian Chua, former academic and political colleague of Syed Husin’s, Dr Sanusi Osman, and former national literary laureate and current Bersih activist, A Samad Said, each in his turn, gave vent to gratitude and admiration for the life of political, literary and intellectual activism of the author.

Samad Said’s recall of a past of quiet and often discrete collaboration in literary and journalistic endeavours with Syed Husin was anecdotally engrossing. His reminiscences deserve a book by itself.

Finally, Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim performed the launching honours after a halting but valiant attempt at reading Rudyard Kipling’s rousing poem “If”, a dithyramb to valorous struggle in quest of noble beliefs that could well have served as ideational props for Syed Husin’s life.

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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. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.