Preface

Summary

Nation building is often assumed. Unless one happens to be intimately involved, the details are not obvious; certainly not to the man in the street, let alone to the young and far-removed generations. The rough-and-tumble of competing visions and political manoeuvrings are conducted mostly behind the scenes and away from the public eye. Much of this is not reported by the media or even recorded for posterity. Thus, nation building may seem mysterious to some and non-existent to many others.

It is only when one reads the writings of those in the thick of things that one begins to understand the dilemmas, complexities, and uncertainties. It is then that one starts to appreciate the dimensions of the problems and the qualities of the people involved. Intelligence, knowledge, and skill are commonly not enough to arrive at the desired outcomes. Values, beliefs, and principles are equally critical, as are the conviction and firmness in holding onto them.

If the nation-building process is not always apparent, their results most definitely are. The difference between national unity and disunity, administrative effectiveness and dysfunction, and prosperity and poverty are not so much driven by policy pronouncements as the strength of the consensus that led them to be crafted in the first place. Force, coercion, and threats are rarely effective in sustained nation building.

In Drifting into Politics: The Unfinished Memoirs of Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, readers are taken on a first-hand journey into the behind-the-scenes tumult that preceded Independence, the formation of the Federation of Malaya and Malaysia, and post- May 1969. One sees how, at each stage, things could have so easily gone down a different path and gone badly wrong were it not for a handful of men who thought nothing of putting their careers, families, and ultimately even their lives on the line.

Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman was such a man. He worked hard to achieve his personal ambition of being a medical doctor, but just when he was in a position to reap the rewards, he yielded to the call of a cause bigger than himself: first, independence, and then nation building. This may seem quaint and old-fashioned by the values of today but nothing could be further from the truth.