Remembering Pak Samad

JOURNALISTS today must be well-read, well-informed and not just conclude issues without proper understanding, research and based on a five-minute burst of videos, a veteran journalist said.

Terence Netto, who worked under Tan Sri A Samad Ismail or Pak Samad, the doyen of Malaysian media, said this would have been the likely advice to his younger charges now.

Pak Samad, arguably the most illustrious journalist in our history who died in 2008, will be remembered in a centenary commemoration on April 21 through a special panel discussion on the man’s legacy in Malaysian journalism.

He has been largely forgotten but his admirers have produced a centenary booklet, “The Agony of an Intellectual”, and will speak at a panel discussion to be held in his honour at Gerak Budaya in Petaling Jaya on April 21 at 3pm.
 
The speakers – constitutional lawyer Dominic Puthucheary, retired academician and ex-senator Syed Husin Ali, and Netto – will touch on the man’s importance to journalism and politics in (then) Malaya and Singapore.

Both Puthucheary, 90 and Syed Husin, 88, have known Pak Samad since the mid-1950s in Singapore when Pak Samad was a Utusan Melayu editor and a moving force in the newly formed People’s Action Party (PAP) whose secretary-general was Singapore’s founding father, the late Lee Kuan Yew.

Netto started work as a cadet journalist in the New Straits Times in 1973.

In his piece on “The Agony of an Intellectual”, Netto noted that Samad had been through “a welter of experiences not likely to be replicated in anyone’s life.”

“He did not have tertiary education but by a young age, he had read so much that his stature was respected by his more educated peers,” said Netto.

“He could write well in both English and Malay but hid his erudition behind staccato tones in both languages and a readiness to guffaw at the earliest intimation of humour in a situation.

“He once told me he read all of Bernard Shaw’s plays when he was detained for two years (1951-53) by the British colonial authorities on St. John’s Island, off Singapore,” recalled Netto.

Pak Samad was detained under security ordinances thrice in his life, twice by the British in Singapore and once by the Malaysian authorities in June 1976.

The third spell, for ostensibly promoting pro-communist activities, was the most damaging in that he was on the verge of becoming the editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times group.

Pak Samad passed his Senior Cambridge exam in 1941 and came to political consciousness when he joined Utusan Melayu in Singapore before the Japanese invasion of Malaya and the island in December 1941.

His thinking was moulded by the revolutionary conditions in China and Indonesia, the demand for independence in India, and the rise of anti-colonial sentiments in Southeast Asia.

Netto said, “He was marinated in the anti-colonial thinking in which the English-educated youth of Southeast Asia found themselves and although that thinking was inclined to be left-wing, Samad was no communist.”

If one was to ask about what advice Pak Samad would dispense now, the overwhelming answer would be to read more and to be well-read, said Netto.

“The trouble with young people these days is that they don’t read,” Pak Samad once lamented to Netto in several chats the younger journalist had with the elderly editor in the latter’s house in Petaling Jaya.

“Acquaintance with him was one of the happy windfalls of my life,” remarked Netto.

Pak Samad also promoted several social causes through his columns.

He drew attention to social inequalities within society and called for the national standardisation of the Malay language and the complex relationship between race and Malaysian politics. – The Vibes, April 14, 2024.