Karpal committed to a broader, inclusive Malaysian identity

 

DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng hugging opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim after Anwar paid a tribute to the late Karpal Singh at his house in Jalan Utama, Penang. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Hasnoor Hussain, April 17, 2014.

Karpal Singh – or just plain “Karpal” – was already a legend when I first started work as a young lawyer at Skrine&Co in the late 1980s.

There would be a frisson of excitement and drama for us juniors if Karpal was in town. We'd slip into the courtroom and watch him at work.

He was a tall, imposing man: impressive-looking and seemingly without fear as he tackled what were thought to be the “impossible” cases defending Barlow and Chambers, confronting D.P. Vijandran.

(Barlow and Chambers refer to the hanging in 1986 of two Australian citizens, Kevin John Barlow and Brian Geoffrey Shergold Chambers from Perth, for trafficking 141.9g of heroin. They were the first Westerners to be executed in Malaysia. Karpal had defended Barlow.

(D.P. Vijandran was embroiled in a sex video and Karpal had submitted the tape to Parliament in 1992.)

As I looked on, I always felt that while we were chasing “bill-able” hours and servicing corporate clients, he was making history.

By the time I'd started writing full-time, Karpal's importance had grown even further. He had become a staunch and unflinching advocate of justice as well as a secular Malaysia: consistent and questioning to the end.

I can still remember gate-crashing a large but enormously affable celebratory gathering of Pakatan Rakyat supporters in Puchong after the historic 2008 general election.

First, the crowd erupted as Teresa Kok arrived, providing her with a tumultuous welcome. As a certified DAP “darling” one wouldn't have expected anything less.

Minutes later, Karpal turned up with his family. Having not seen him for years, I was a little shocked by how much smaller he was physically – a result of car accident in 2005.

While diminished in terms of size he possessed a certain aura – calm and benign – sitting in his wheel-chair as the crowd all around him went wild – the enthusiasm as raw and excitable as anything Teresa had inspired.

Given that the crowd was almost entirely ethnic Chinese, I was eager to understand why he'd been so lionised and so I asked one of the guests.

She answered simply: "We love him because he represents all of us: rich or poor, Chinese, Malay or Indian. He is brave and honest."

Karpal's was truly a Malaysian life. His political journey began in 1974 after he was elected as the state assemblyman for Alor Star.

Later on, he clinched the Jelutong parliamentary seat in 1978, which he held until 1999 – until he was dubbed as the famous “Tiger of Jelutong”.

He was also the state assemblyman of Bukit Gelugor from 1978-1990. Eventually, he was elected as the member of parliament for Bukit Gelugor in 2004 and successfully defended his seat in the 2008 and 2013 general elections.

As a politician, he was not free from controversy. Blistering in attack, he was the kind of man who called a spade a spade and then proceeded to hit an adversary over the head with the same spade.

In fact, even before his previous car accident in 2005 where he was paralysed and wheelchair-bound, Karpal was one of the most vocal opposition members, both inside and outside Parliament.

Back in the days when there were only a few rows of opposition benches and long before Nurul Izzah Anwar, Tony Pua and Rafizi Ramli had surfaced, Karpal was a dramatic presence enlivening and informing our public debates going head-to-head with likes of Tun Mahathir Mohammad and the then deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

He spoke out strongly against the concept of Islamic state and the implementation of hudud laws. Whilst this was to strain relations between PAS and DAP it reflected a fundamental ideological difference that he was unafraid to tackle.

Whilst there were some who saw his steadfast refusal to accept hudud as “anti-Muslim” or “anti-Malay”, the reality was that he belonged to a generation that was committed to a broader and infinitely more inclusive “Malaysian” identity.

Karpal suffered considerably for his courage and steadfastness. In 1987, he was arrested under the now abolished-ISA during Operation Lalang. Earlier this year, he was found guilty of sedition – a court decision which Karpal himself had calmly accepted.

Still, no one can deny his eagle-eyed focus on the truth as fought against injustice, shaping the political landscape.

In a Malaysia whose leaders increasingly cannot say what they mean – or worse yet, even mean what they say, the loss of his candour and sharp legal mind is a blow to the nation. – April 17, 2014.