Apalasamy – DAP's noble highlands warrior

CAMERON POLLS | In the decades-long struggle of the DAP to establish a foothold in Cameron Highlands, a BN bastion for umpteen years, one figure occupies a special place.

Apalasamy Simmathiri, 67, was the DAP candidate in five general elections since 1990 – thrice for the state seat of Tanah Rata and twice for the parliamentary one of Cameron Highlands.

In all five contests, Apalasamy (above, in red cap) lost in this BN stronghold but managed to save his deposit, a case of being beaten but unbowed.

The defeats were not surprising because of the ruggedness of the vast terrain, the mixed-race composition of the electorate and the enormous advantages incumbency conferred on BN.

These obstacles, once seen as insuperable and now viewed as challenges that can be overcome, have shed a warm afterglow on Apalasamy's efforts at upholding the party's colours in the face of daunting odds.

In the two-week campaign for tomorrow's vote, Apalasamy was a conspicuous if reticent presence at Pakatan Harapan gatherings and ceramah.

Party workers cheer whenever speakers doff their caps to Apalasamy in prefatory remarks as if to acknowledge that the party would not be where it is in Cameron Highlands today had their veteran standard bearer not blazed the once lonely trail.

Apalasamy's pioneering efforts on behalf of DAP would fructify if its candidate to wrest the long-held BN seat, S Manogaran, wins tomorrow.

Forty-one years after setting up the first DAP branch in the district of Kuala Terla, Apalasamy, a vegetable farmer for most of his 67 years, will feel a sense of deep satisfaction that his pioneering efforts have borne fruit.

“When we set up the DAP branch in 1978, Cameron Highlands was part of the Lipis parliamentary constituency and Ghazali Shafie was the member of Parliament,” he recalled.

Invited by Patto

Apalasamy was born in Sungei Siput in 1950 to a leftist father, an estate mandore, who imbued him with sympathy for the poor and a sense of social activism on their behalf.

Good results in the Lower Certificate of Education in 1965 and at Senior Cambridge in 1967 brought him to the notice of then MIC leader and minister VT Sambanthan, the MP for Sungei Siput, who employed him as a peon in his constituency office.

He did not stay long in Sungei Siput. He moved to Cameron Highlands when he was offered a job as an assistant manager of a tea estate there.

Apalasamy came under the influence of the legendary P Patto whom he met in Sungei Siput on one of the DAP stalwart's support-garnering campaign swings in northern Perak. Patto invited him to join the party.

In 1970, Apalasamy left his tea estate job and bought an acre of land on which to plant vegetables in Kampong Terla which was to become a DAP stronghold.

He became a fixture of the DAP in the highlands, leading to serial appearances as a candidate for the state assembly from Tanah Rata and for Parliament from Cameron Highlands which was hived off from the Lipis ward by 1990.

If Manogaran triumphs in Camerons tomorrow, he will have to touch his forelock in gratitude to the man who paved the way for him.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others. - Mkini