OBITUARY It would be no surprise for one to admire the worth of a politician with whom one has had no interaction whatever than just reading of him in his party’s organ, incidentally the last place in which to find a critical assessment of the man.

Many politicians are held in esteem by multitudes which have not beheld anything more than their visages in the media but have merely read or heard their voices.

These are the titans of reform and change in their countries whose struggles resonate way beyond their geographical confines.          

NONE Ustaz Hassan Shukri ( left ), the former deputy president of PAS who died a day after completing his umpteenth attendance at his party’s annual muktamar, was certainly not in the class of transnational political luminary.

He was - in the accounts of him in Harakah over the past 12 years of the PAS organ’s multiracial appeal - not from the top drawer of PAS leaders, the ones who have given critical direction and vision to the party.

But he was a very good subordinate leader, who had he been gifted with tertiary education, would have emerged a top-drawer leader of the party.

hassan shukri funeral - nik aziz sobbing He was the kind of leader an emerging party would be privileged to possess, able to serve without fanfare in tedious roles such as refining the party’s constitution and taking on tasks lesser lights found onerous.     

Just by reading about him in Harakah over the last 12 years of that not infrequently invigorating periodical’s appeal to readers who are not PAS members, one was able to make inferences about Hassan: a resolute party man, sustained by certitudes of faith and family, at once simple and collegial.

One could share the man’s vaunted delight when after the 1999 general election PAS sent a hitherto unmatched 27 representatives to Parliament, he wrote in Harakah of his joy at seeing the younger set in his party – professionally qualified and steering the party in a new direction through a fusion of its professional and religiously educated ranks.

Unstinting loyalty

He recalled aspects of his past - in the 1950s - of driving in battered vehicles to remote corners of the Peninsula to campaign, the years of struggle on slender means and flickering hopes.

He said in the same article that it was good to see the younger set in sleek personal cars, turning out for the party in Parliament and at state assembles that they controlled - Terengganu in addition to Kelantan, in 1999.

Hassan Shukri funeral It was the true party’s man unstinting delight in a success, the paving for which Hassan Shukri, who must have been 73 when he expired, had done much throughout his life.

His death comes at a time when fellow components of Pakatan Rakyat continue to be afflicted with crossovers to Independent ranks, none of which would happen if the defectors had any familiarity with Hassan Shukri’s brand of party loyalty, which is the patient and dedicated service of a lifetime.

The French poet Alfred de Vigny observed that the good life is a dream of youth realised in maturity.

Hassan Shukri, enlisting in PAS in his teenage years, was sustained by the dream of his party not just stalking the corridors of power but commanding it.

His death has come when some would say his party is on the cusp of that dream’s fulfillment.

Above: Photos of Hassan Shukri's funeral today, including PAS spiritual leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat breaking into tears.

 

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.