TRIBUTE ABDUL - Perdana Library

Tunku Abdul Rahman
Supreme Leader And Diplomat
(G. H. KIAT O.B.E )
History always reveals that in any great crisis and emergency,
a leader emerges. Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of
England during the Second World War - an office which was the
ambition of his whole life.
Any one conversant with the present history of Malaya must
be aware that due mainly to the untiring and herculean efforts of
the late Dato Onn bin Ja'afar, the Malayan Union, which was
never a credit to the British, was scrapped. When the United
Malay National Organisation was founded after the Japanese
Occupation, Tunku Abdul Rahman was just a humble member
and admirer of the father of Malayan nationalism, but when Dato
Onn's proposal to broaden UMNO by allowing other races to
join as members was rejected, an earnest appeal was made to the
Tunku to replace him and it was late in 1951 that he was elected
President and has remained in this office ever since.
Prior to his holding and assuming this high office of State,
there was not much that was known to throw much light of the
great man he is to-day. When as a young man, may be a little
irresponsible, he could not get a place at St. Catherine's College,
Cambridge, and was told none were available for him and that the
College was built for Englishmen only, to his credit it must be added
that he had told the story without any bitterness; but all the same,
this has taken root and made him decide, perhaps, for the first time
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