Farewell to an Indomitable

 

From Terence Netto

DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang’s decision to bring down the curtain on his 56-year career in politics is expected to prevent the listing ship of his party from ploughing into reefs.

His retirement savors of an anticlimax because it comes just four years after the marathon man of Malaysian politics had led his party to its highest altitude: participation in the federal government.

Herein lies a shred of cruel irony.

DAP’s experience of federal governance was so brief – 22 months out of a projected 60 – and marred by a helplessness to do well in office, it seemed that only a second tryst with federal destiny would be necessary as salve for wounded pride at having failed the first time.

But there will be no second time, not for Lim Kit Siang, at least.

What’s worse is that Kit Siang’s quitting now is reckoned as helping to avert a more damaging diminution of DAP’s prospects at the next general election, portended by its dismal performances at the Melaka, Sarawak and Johor state polls.

Critics have ascribed DAP’s downdraft to its reliance on tired, old faces.

It must hurt for a political statesman to retire so soon after his party had attained an unexpected summit only to be ousted in a manner that shed tantalising prospects of a return.

His doggedness had made the attainment of the summit possible in the first place; but now his durability is viewed as a drawback.

Rudyard Kipling’s musings about triumph and disaster being “imposters, both the same” has never been more pertinent to Kit Siang than now.

At its close, his career possesses an integrity that has made his life – swimming powerfully against the tides of opportunism and nihilism of principle – a tiny diamond in the shifting sands of our political history.

“Hail and Farewell” (ave atque vale) was the Latin poet Catullus’s elegiac tribute to his fallen brother. It ought to suffice for Kit Siang. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.