[1241] Of when justice was swift and sure

Somehow, I am proud of my uncle:

SULAIMAN Nordin was a new district forest officer in Pahang in the mid-Sixties. He had recently graduated in forestry from the University of Tasmania, where he had been a popular student, and hailed from rural Malacca, where breeding and good manners were particularly highly prized.

In all the years that I knew him, I had never seen him without a smile. Many who mistook his natural good nature as a sign of weakness had reason to regret their mistake. Underneath that gentle exterior of warmth and politeness was a man determined to protect and defend his personal values of self worth, honesty and integrity, at all costs.

Stories of corruption in forestry were legion. Sulaiman did not have long to wait for his scruples to be put to the severest test.

When he discovered that a company was engaged in illegal logging, he confiscated their Caterpillar and Komatsu equipment, the best in the business, worth several million ringgit. All this was done according to the law.

He was not surprised when two unsavoury characters came a-calling.

They had obviously been used to buying their way out of trouble, and previous DFOs had been more than accommodating in a situation such as this. They genuinely believed in the conventional wisdom that “every man has his price”. They were adept at name-dropping. Their conversation was laced liberally with stories intended to show the young forest officer how close they were to the state forest officer, the director of lands and mines, the state secretary and the district officer.

When Sulaiman showed he was not overawed, they changed tack. How about a night out, perhaps? They claimed they were going to Taiwan and Japan, and he would be most welcome to tag along.

Thank you, said Sulaiman, but he was too busy to go anywhere.

He was a difficult customer, the likes of whom they had never met before. They concluded that if a night out on the town, a jolly party to the geisha houses of Japan and close connections they enjoyed with the cream of Pahang society could not produce the results, they had another trick up their sleeve which, based on previous experience, was guaranteed to work.

Then, with the confidence that came with regular practice, the briefcase they had brought was pushed with all due ceremony across the table towards Sulaiman. He rose to his full height of five foot five, picked it up and hurled it out through the swing doors into the general office, to the astonishment of his staff.

In measured language, he read the riot act, warning his visitors he was reporting their attempt to bribe him, a government officer. He left them in no doubt that they were not to come to his office ever again.

He took the briefcase, full of high denomination notes, to the police and lodged his report. He thought, knowing how slow the wheels of bureaucracy moved, he would wait a few days to see the outcome of his fight against corruption.

To his utter disgust, he learnt that the police had orders not to proceed. He found himself bombarded with telephone calls from his head in Kuantan and other influential individuals to withdraw his report and release the logging equipment.

It was then that Sulaiman realised he was taking on forces that could destroy his career, but he was strengthened by his conviction that the system could not destroy his deep aversion for corruption. He was not going to be part of corruption, no matter what the material cost to him personally. He resigned, as he had obviously become the odd man out, and knew that the department of forestry was not an option for an honest professional.

My own direct experience of forestry corruption in high places started when I applied, in my capacity as the Guthrie executive responsible for land matters, among other things, for an additional 5,000 acres of state land adjoining Chenor Estate in Pahang. The 4,500-acre rubber plantation was being converted rapidly to oil palm and it was thought that a plantation of less than 5,000 acres would not be able to support its own mill.

I was so delighted the approval came so quickly that I overlooked the unusually big premium we were being asked to pay. On further enquiry, I was told that the area alienated to Guthrie contained very valuable timber, referred to as “merchantable timber”.

As I had to visit Kuantan to finalise the transaction with the land office, I thought I should drop into Chenor Estate and say hello to our Belgian manager, who came with the property when Guthrie acquired it.

Business completed, I proceeded to Kuantan, arriving in the early evening. In the late 1960s, the only decent accommodation to be had for love or money was the rather nice government rest house at Teluk Chempedak.

As I was enjoying a cup of tea and some cucumber sandwiches, in walked a former Pahang state forest officer, Eric Foenander, who, while in service, doubled as the game warden.

He was the famous big game hunter who wrote the much admired classic, Big Game Hunting in Malaya, published in England. I invited him to join me.

He wanted to know what I was doing in Kuantan. I mentioned the additional area that had been alienated to Guthrie, and he wanted to know where it was exactly and how much the premium was.

I produced the land office map of the surveyed area. When I said the premium was a little on the high side because the land contained “merchantable timber”, he literally exploded: “Tunku, what merchantable timber? There is absolutely nothing there. It was completely logged out almost as soon as I retired!”

Foenander, who knew Pahang like the back of his hand, said he would show me the area.

Early the following morning, he drove me in his Rover up a hillock near Chenor Estate. He spread a Malayan survey department map on the bonnet of his car and proceeded to point out the area in question. There was not a single tree that even the greediest logger would want to waste his time on.

Armed with this information, I asked the district forest officer of Temerloh for an explanation, then the state forest officer, followed by the director of lands and mines. I had no joy from any of them and reported the matter to (the late Tan Sri) Harun Hashim, the no-nonsense head of the Anti-Corruption Agency.

I remember seeing him on Wednesday morning and he said he would arrange for the menteri besar, then Datuk Yahaya Mohd Seh, to see me the following Monday. His letter would be on the MB’s desk.

The kindly Yahaya looked decidedly under the weather, and his opening remarks were: “Tunku, you should have come to see me first before going to Harun Hashim.”

I replied, “Datuk, I am from an old Kedah civil service family, and have been taught never to short-circuit established channels. It was only when I received no satisfactory explanation that I went to Harun.”

The upshot of my report was the mass transfer of senior federal officers out of Pahang.

Those were the days of swift action against the corrupt by a government determined to confront corruption decisively.

Harun was independent, a man of great courage who had the complete support of Tunku Abdul Rahman, the prime minister and Tun Ismail Abdul Rahman, the minister for home affairs.

The writer is a former president of Transparency International and former special adviser to the UN secretary-general on ethics. He can be contacted at tunkua@gmail.com. [Tunku Abdul Aziz. When justice was swift and sure. NST. May 27 2007]

When I first read the article over the weekend, I did not quite remember that I have an uncle by the name of Sulaiman and a grandfather named Nordin.

Silly me.

Fearing time turning the article into corrupted matters, I am reproducing this article here in totality.