Syed Nadzri on Tuesday: Back to the future for Pak Rashid
New Straits Times (Columns)
10 Oct 2006
Syed Nadzri 

THE story of Pak Rashid makes me wonder. What has he missed? What has this person, who has just come out of prison and is seeing the outside world for the first time in 30 years, missed out?

Plenty. Oh so plenty. It’s like he stepped off the Earth and came back on again.

I won’t be surprised if he suddenly asks when Elvis or Sudirman would be releasing their next albums. Or if he gets back into the 1970s fashion, sporting an Afro hairstyle, thick belt and platform shoes. Or if he faints when he sees the Petronas Twin Towers.

Pak Rashid (real name Mohd Salleh Talib), the country’s longest-serving prisoner, must have been caught in a time warp. Stuck in time.

His world must have stopped turning in 1976 when he was sentenced to spend his entire natural life in prison for armed robbery in Baling, Kedah.

A "natural life" term means that the prisoner is in jail until the day he dies. His only way out is through a pardon.

In contrast, when a person is sentenced to life imprisonment, it means that he serves a maximum of 20 years in prison, but often this is reduced to 14 years for good behaviour.

Pak Rashid applied for — and was granted — a pardon from the Pardons Board. And he came out last Tuesday.

Of course, as he told the New Sunday Times two days ago, there were ways for him to keep abreast with developments in the outside world, such as through newspapers, made available at times. But I’m sure it was a completely different life behind those four grey walls that surrounded him.

For instance, the outside world itself has turned into quite a jungle (and probably it is a lot safer inside).

If he was driving then, I’m sure he would not want to drive now, what with road thugs and Mat Rempits.

And there are just too many shockers to numb him — the price of petrol has doubled, there are strange new Malay words like mesej and sensasi, and Michael Jackson has turned white. Imagine the milestone events he missed. Some of them here:

• The Dr Mahathir years. Pak Rashid completely sat this one out despite the fact that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was the country’s Prime Minister for 22 years from 1981.

In fact, Pak Rashid went to prison only a few months after Tun Hussein Onn became the country’s third prime minister, taking over from Tun Abdul Razak Hussein who died suddenly in January 1976.

The Dr Mahathir years will feature prominently in history in just about every aspect — development, industrialisation, policy changes as well as controversies.

• Time change. Pak Rashid would have thought that there was still a 30-minute time difference between Sabah and Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia, whereas a Standard Malaysian Time was introduced in 1981, just after Dr Mahathir became Prime Minister. Peninsular Malaysia time was moved ahead by 30 minutes for this purpose.

• The Proton Saga. He would be awestruck to see that the roads are now filled with Malaysian-made cars, a far cry from the Toyota KE30, Datsun 120Y and Colt Lancer during his time.

• The North-South Expressway. In 1976, a road journey from Pak Rashid’s hometown in Baling to Kuala Lumpur would have taken at least nine hours. Now, the time has been halved with the completion of the highway 15 years ago. The man himself admitted in the NST that he was dumbstruck when he saw the roads.

• He had to forgo seven of Malaysia’s 11 general elections since Merdeka — and all the colourful characters that emerged during these periods.

• Pak Rashid missed the groundbreaking ouster of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini’s coming into power which, in many ways, influenced the shape of the whole Islamic world thereafter.

• The fall of the Soviet Union passed him by. The superpower which balanced out the influence of the United States, disintegrated into less-powerful independent states, resulting in a unipolar world for more than 15 years now.

• The Gulf War. There were two in fact — one in 1991 after Iraq had occupied Kuwait and again 12 years later when US-led forces invaded Iraq over its alleged concealment of weapons of mass destruction.

• 9/11. Never in Pak Rashid’s wildest dreams could he have expected the scale of the century’s deadliest terror attacks and what happened afterwards.

• Tsunami. Neither could he picture the scale of devastation brought about by nature when tsunami hit north-west Sumatra and many Indian Ocean-rim countries, causing untold death and destruction.

But some things, as Pak Rashid would discover, never change. Among them:

• The Rolling Stones are still on tour.

• Malays continue to lag behind in the country’s economy. Pak Rashid went to prison when the New Economic Policy was just into its fourth year. Thirty years on, the targets are still not reached.

• The Arabs and Israel are still at war.