A controversy is brewing in Sibu over the signature campaign to name a road after Lau King Howe, the man who sold off his properties and donated the money to build a modern hospital, which was named after him, for the town.
It is believed the Sibu Municipal Council had mulled over the idea of naming a road after him after the hospital was closed but the idea met with objection and was left on the back burner.
Recently to push through the idea, a political party initiated a signature campaign to call on the council name the road after Lau, flaring up a dispute over the naming of the road.
It is unfortunate that the wish to honour this great man has taken a political hue but more disturbingly it has also veered towards a racial confrontation as the campaign has inadvertently raised the hackles of the Malay-Melanau community who do not wish to have a Chinese name for a road that runs through their ancestral land.
While some quarters view the move to name that road after a Chinese as racially insensitive to the local community, the organisers of the campaign argue that they were merely honouring a man whose sacrifice had benefited every community in the town including the Malay-Melanau community in the area.
The situation veered closer towards a racial confrontation when Tememggong Datuk Wan Hamid Edruce a Malay-Melanau community leader made a call to the organisers to stop the campaign saying that they did not bother about the sentiments of his community in pushing for the naming of the road.
Wan Hamid regarded the campaign as an act to wipe out the history of the community and chillingly warned that his people would be provoked to fight back.
Such talk is alien to Sarawak but to Wan Hamid’s credit, in true Sarawakian spirit, he advised his community not to act rashly and appealed to the campaign organisers to listen to them.
Whatever the merits of the arguments for naming the road after Lau King Howe or against it are, both sides must cool down and put racial harmony of the state above everything else.
Nobody can argue against honouring a man who had done so much for the community irrespective of race or creed through the setting up of the hospital but in hindsight the choice of the road they wish to name could have been taken with more care.
Strangely, although the Malay-Melanau are against naming the road after Lau King Howe, they have not come up with any alternative name for the road.
Perhaps they can suggest an alternative name for the road, which leads to the now Lau King Howe Hospital Memorial, as a first step towards a solution to the dispute.
There is a viable solution of naming the second phase of the Town Square near the road after a Malay-Melanau historical figure or other names to mark the settlement of the community in the area.
If that is not acceptable to the Malay-Melanau community, then alternatively the public park could be named after Lau King Howe and the road given a name acceptable to the community in the area.
Both sides must stand down and relook the situation calmly as this impasse could potentially lead to racial discord.
This issue must not be hijacked by any party to score political points and the communities in Sibu must transcend political boundaries in finding an amicable solution to the situation – the peace of the town is at stake and that matters more than winning elections.