TRIBUTE ABDUL - Perdana Library

TRIBUTE TO TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN
administration that reflected the hopes and aspirations, the
struggles and heart-aches of a whole people composed of antipathetic
racial groups that saw the future in terms of separate
interests and had not been taught and given no opportunity
to learn and see even at a distance the vision of a cohesive
and purposeful nation standing on its own feet.
The Tunku therefore inherited an administration which
however competent, had had its efficiency sharpened and tuned
to considerations and circumstances that ceased to exit on the
stroke of the midnight hour of the 31st August, 1957 and
opened the windows to the vision of a new dawn. After that
fateful hour the ability to govern had to be matched to the
conscious desire of a people willing to be governed.
That the Tunku met these new problems as they arose
straight in the face and without deviation or device, schooled
himself to their solution and the signal successes he thereby
achieved are matters of history. 1 believe profoundly that he
was able to do so because as a man, no rigid formula ever
dominated his mental attitudes, no inflexibility impaired his
approach to problems, no preformed prejudices to men and
matters ever stood in his way of his seeing what he had to do
and what he can do. He has an inborn sense of tolerance
which is not the same as the cultivated quality of toleration,
which latter spells an attitude of patronage, and which indeed
is altogether alien to his nature. He has a supreme sense of
understanding and hence his success in holding together a team
of colleagues of varied capacities and uneven talents and successfully
heading a party of disparate racial groups. And lastly he
is extremely human, so that though born to the purple as he
was, the common touch comes naturally to him. He never
assumes the God and affects the nod. To that all, add the
rare and healthy quality to laugh with others as well as at
himself and, you have a picture of an uncomplicated personality
to whom political leadership comes effortlessly, if only
because he regards every political problem as essentially a
human problem and not an academic exercise. He does not