The sons of Merdeka Award winner Tun Fatimah Hashim tell Arman Ahmad how they followed their mother into the wilderness on the campaign trail
Professor Datuk Dr Khalid Abdul Kadir
THE earliest memory I have of my mother and her political work was in Johor where she was very involved with Umno.
My late father was a magistrate in Johor Baru while mother was involved with Umno's Kaum Ibu (the Wanita Umno of those days).
| Professor Datuk Dr Khalid Abdul Kadir |
I think they worked out an understanding. We had a good nanny, who looked after us like her own children.
In 1969 we moved to Alor Star, where father became legal adviser to the Kedah and Perak state governments.
Since mother was in Alor Star, (then prime minister) Tunku Abdul Rahman got her to contest the Jitra-Padang Terap parliamentary seat. She won and became the member of parliament from 1959 to 1973. As a son, I am very proud that my mother was awarded the Merdeka Award. I am especially proud because I won the Merdeka Award also and, for once in my life, achieved something before she did. (Khalid won the first Merdeka Award for Health, Science and Technology last year).
She had worked very hard throughout her adult life for women's rights and education for women.
In the past, it was difficult for rural women to get a good education and only those who lived in the big cities were lucky enough to get an education.
Before Merdeka, it was difficult for Malay girls to get a Western education. This was because the best schools were convent schools and the Malays were afraid their children would become Christians.
My mother and her colleagues had to convince other mothers to send them to schools and that going to an English medium school didn't mean they would lose their Malay identity.
My mother has always been a strict woman. To achieve the things she wanted to achieve, she had to be regimented in her ways.
But I believe most of her aspirations were not personal but for the women of this country.
My father was not too happy about it, mother being so active politically, but I guess mother managed to balance her political career and her role as our mother.
| Mohamed Shah Abdul Kadir |
Besides, we the children were fortunate to have father's elderly aunty to look after us as a nanny.
But at the same time, mother always made sure she was always there for us.
She would make sure we followed our religious obligations and studied hard.
She would take us - father and us two children - along on the campaign trail. I remember following her to Johor and the remote parts of Perak and Kedah.
There were no roads to these remote places those days, they were only accessible by Land Rover and we would also use the rivers to get to some of these places.
In Nami and Naka in Kedah, we rode on the back of elephants to reach the villagers. I think it was somewhere near the Muda irrigation scheme today.
Mother was on one elephant, while my brother and I followed her on another elephant.
She would talk to the villagers and tell them about the importance of Merdeka. Mother spent all her professional life fighting for women's welfare and education.
Why was she passionate about these women issues? I do not really know.
Perhaps as a village girl she had not got very far in her education because of the attitude towards women at the time, where men like my father were privileged to get an education.
The irony is that some of her ideas were ahead of other developed countries at the time.
When I went to Australia in 1969, the women there were not given the same pay as men.
It was only three years later that they got equal pay.
But in our country, the National Women's Council fought for and got equal pay in the mid 1960s.
I guess what drove her to become a politician is in her blood.
Mohamed Shah Abdul kadir
I STILL remember the day we rode those elephants in Kedah.
There were two elephants complete with seats on them. We had to traverse the paddy fields on them.
I don't know where they got the elephants from. They could have been brought in from Siam (Thailand) specially for mother's campaigning effort.
There were many kampung folk on hand to greet us that day. At some villages, there were huge receptions.
We were kids. We didn't know much about what was going on but we enjoyed the ride and the receptions.
It was fun riding on the elephants.
In Ipoh, mother had a "Baby" Austin. She drove slowly as she had just got her driving licence. She was a very careful driver and she drove unbearably slowly sometimes.
My father didn't allow her to go alone, so I would follow as the "bodyguard".
Sometimes, when other people came on stage to give speeches they would inevitably refer to me jokingly as "Fatimah's bodyguard".
Even when I grew older, I would still follow my mother around the country.
When I was in University Malaya, I remember driving from Kuala Lumpur all the way to Kedah to help mother with her campaigning.
There were three of us in the Land Rover, me and two friends. One was Chinese, the other an Indian. When we arrived in Kedah, we helped mother to ferry people to the Padang Terap polling centre in the Land Rover.
Years earlier, on Merdeka Day, mother brought me and my uncle to Kuala Lumpur, where we stayed at (Tun) Sardon Jubir's (the health minister from 1957 to 1972) house.
I remember the day at the Selangor Padang in Kuala Lumpur where my mother was sitting somewhere else with her (Umno) colleagues while I was with my uncle.
Many people were shouting "Merdeka!" I didn't fully understand what was going on. I was just 10 at the time.
| Tun Fatimah Hashim managed to balance the responsibilities of her political career and her role as a wife and mother. |
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