Farewell my friend SC Chan

The brief text message from Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) supreme council member Tedewin Ngumbang Datu was like a bolt from the blue: ‘Dsri, our fren SC Chan passed away after a failed by-pass ops @ Normah this am. RIP.'

It was only last Sunday that I heard from Michael Teh, a senior reporter with the New Sabah Times , that SC - Tony Thien to malaysiakini - was scheduled to undergo a heart by-pass surgery. There were no other details. Teh sounded very casual about it and the surgery appeared routine.

I first came across the name SC Chan sometime in late 1976 when I used to drop by the Press Foundation of Asia (PFA) which then shared offices with the Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) in Jalan Masjid India. PFA put out a weekly feature service package from Manila called DEPTHnews, depth standing for development, economics, population theme.

SC Chan was a prolific reporter, never failing to turn out at least one story every week for DEPTHnews and sometimes for the sister packages viz. DEPTHnews Science Service, DEPTHnews Asian Women's Service and Data Asia, a weekly called Media, and Asian Finance, a monthly.

Initially, it was the consistency of his output that caught my eye. Later, I marvelled at the fact that he could find something to write about Sarawak, about which I knew very little then, to sell to Asia and the world every week.

Borneo is a difficult sell. I had grown up thinking that Sarawak was a god-forsaken place where nothing stirred except for the occasional whining of a mosquito. SC Chan was my first real introduction to Sarawak. I had yet to meet the man whose full name, I later learnt, was Chan Seng Chai.

In December 1979, I had the chance to visit Kuching to produce a Sarawak supplement for the Timber Trade Review (TTR), published by the Malaysian Timber Industry Board. I made a mental note to contact SC Chan.

It was not a good trip for me and I took ill in Kuching. I spent three days sleeping it off in my room at the Holiday Inn.

Still, I managed to get all my work done on the fourth day and was scheduled to return home the same evening.

Meeting SC Chan

My last stop was the Sarawak Tribune to pay a courtesy call on Raymond Adai, the editor in chief. It was Adai who told me over the phone when I first arrived that SC, who had a day job at the Sarawak Tribune as news editor, was in London and would not be back for several days.

Adai was a charming and most hospitable host. He gave me a brief rundown on the Sarawak Tribune , Sarawak and the timber industry. A young gentleman sitting next to him in his room later did most of the talking. Adai listened in silence, smiling and nodding now and then. There were a couple of others present. I don't remember being introduced to the young man.

All too soon I had to take leave. I decided that I should at least enquire his name from this young man. I was taken aback when he replied: "I am SC Chan."

I replied: "Hey! You are the one I have been looking for since I got here. I have read all your work in DEPTHnews."

Apparently, he had returned from London the day before. He insisted on driving me back to the Holiday Inn for tea and cakes and to the airport.

Over tea at the Holiday Inn, I asked SC Chan the fateful question: "How come there are no advertising or PR agencies in Kuching?"

He assured me that there were none and that he was thinking of starting one and invited me to join him in partnership. There was some sort of instant chemistry between us. He had some ideas. All this from a man I had just met. But that's SC Chan for you. He had no hang-ups and apparently no baggage from the past.

All I knew about him was that he came from Marudi, along the Baram, and that his mother was Iban. There was a distinct touch of the native in him.

I dropped SC a brief thank you note from the plane. There were some more phone calls and letters between KL and Kuching and he flew over several times to discuss our proposed PR and Ad agency. He was not one to rush in blindly and made discreet enquiries of me from then New Sunday Times Editor PC Shivadas who had Sarawak connections. Shivadas did a stint in Kuching and is married to a lady from Sibu.

By mid 1980, we had launched SengchaiFernz Associates Sdn Bhd at the Kuching Plaza, one of the companies in which SC had a 10 percent stake. Among his other business partners in Kuching Plaza was Leonard Linggi Jugah, the son of the famous Temengong Jugah.

SC had the right formula for our new outfit. He had a 10 percent stake in the Sarawak Tribune and wanted our outfit to be the media representative for the newspaper in Kuala Lumpur. Also, he had hoped to bring in Linggi as the chairman.

Both plans didn't work out. Linggi decided that he didn't know anything about the media business and wanted to watch and wait. Tribune Mediarep, the media representative for Sarawak Tribune in Kuala Lumpur, decided to fight back and SC didn't want to pursue the matter anymore.

Instead, we tried to be the advertising representatives in Kuching for the New Straits Times Group. But there were very few ads for the NST from Kuching. It was too expensive for most clients.

SC brought in two other directors, AS Jaya, a former Bernama chief in Kuching and his nephew Arief Arabi, an executive with Hino Malaysia. But that didn't work out either because they weren't quite sure either how they could help out on the business side. Jaya was one of five partners in a small timber concession that SC had in Baram.

Chief Minister Abdul Rahman Yakub, who had taken over Sarawak Tribune after a successful court case, approved the concession.

Initially, I helped out some days at the Sarawak Tribune ; briefly helping SC put the paper to bed. There was always a gathering of young reporters around him. Solley Wong and Vincent Mohd Jaya Tan were particularly close to him. He was shattered when both of them moved on at a very young age. Francis Paul Siah, Malaysian Mirror editor, came in sometime in 1979 and soon got on Taib's nerves.

Eventually, I offered to let SC run our PR and Ad outfit and return to KL. I was losing my own publishers everyday. But he wouldn't hear of it since he "didn't have the time to sit in one place and run the day-to-day operations". Besides the Kuching Plaza, Sarawak Tribune and the timber concession, he also had a stake in a shipping company and Taman Sri Sarawak, a development company with Linggi that had the entire land bank opposite the Holiday Inn. He had other business interests but I only knew of those he told me.

Three years later we called it quits, he much earlier, and we went our separate ways. By that time, we had built up a modest staff strength of eight but the business was not growing.

Our ad hoc client list included a struggling Ting Pek King, among others, and print management jobs that I picked up in KL. Graphic artists and other trained staff were hard to come by in Kuching and we had to cope with staff turnover.

We were no nearer to clinching the media representation in KL and Linggi was still not on board our little outfit. We needed a big name. The Star deputy executive chairman, Clement Hii, used to drop by the office now and then but he was at that time standing at a crossroads looking quite lost himself.

He possessed an incredible energy

SC had incredible energy and could get involved in all sorts of activities while I was pre-occupied with journalism. He was the regular wheeler-dealer. He tried to get me to follow in his footsteps and contribute wherever I could to get a modest stake for myself in various businesses. But I decided that it was not my cup of tea. Besides, I knew no one in Sarawak except for him and I didn't know enough of Sarawak.

By this time, I was smitten with Sarawak in more ways than one and stayed on, dividing my time between KL and Kuching. I became the Sarawak correspondent for the Bandar Seri Begawan-based Borneo Bulletin . In addition, I continued my association with PFA and DEPTHnews, contributed to the Star , Asiaweek and several regional publications.

Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, who replaced his uncle Abdul Rahman Yakub in 1981, was very unhappy with Borneo Bulletin after the BN lost a mid-1980s by-election in Batang Ai to PBDS (Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak). He was even more unhappy with an article I had written in the Star on the political system in Sarawak. So, my wife and I left Sarawak in September 1986. My wife, a Sarawakian, goes home quite often.

I had only infrequent contacts with SC after I left Sarawak and thereafter lost all touch with him. Somehow the old chemistry between us was no longer there. One day, I heard that he had moved back to journalism with renewed vigour. It was around the time that he started writing for Malaysiakini .

The story along the grapevine was that he "had it with Taib Mahmud and felt that he should do something to remove this man from power". It is not known what became of his many business interests but things were not getting any better either in Sarawak business-wise with the Taib family having a finger in every pie.

The fact that Taib was almost singlehandedly responsible for the closure of his beloved Sarawak Tribune didn't endear him to SC. I could not understand it myself either, killing a paper that was an institution in Sarawak. The Home Ministry was willing to renew the publishing and printing permit after a period of suspension over a religiously offensive cartoon. No one is telling the story here in full.

In all the years that I have known SC, I have never heard him raise his voice or lose his temper. The man had a remarkable cool about him. He was generous to a fault with friends. If not for him, I would not have been drawn to Sarawak.

We had a tryst with destiny. Farewell my friend. Rest in Peace.

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