Wan Junaidi posing with a photo of his class of the year 1963 at JKR Sarawak Survey School.
IT was a day like any other for the then 17-year-old Santubong MP Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar when Sarawak was granted self-governance on July 22, 1963, by the British government, after being a Crown Colony since 1946.
At that time, he was just fresh out of school and managed to get into the Public Works Department (JKR) Sarawak Survey School, as it was called back then, as a trainee technical assistant that focused on road engineering. There were about 20 students in his class, the majority of whom were Chinese, followed by a few Malays and Iban.
“It was really a normal day (July 22, 1963) for us. If you talk about the history of the time and how I look at that moment now, it is different than how I look at it when I was only 17 years old. I was more occupied with my studies in the Survey School then,” he said during an interview with The Borneo Post at his residence here.
Wan Junaidi said life was simpler in the old days and less political. He felt the only difference after that historical day was the appointment of local ministers to administer the state, while the British governor took a step back but still oversaw the state’s administration.
Wan Junaidi reminisced that the streets of Kuching was full of British soldiers, known as ‘Green Jackets’, and military assistance was also sent by the Federation of Malaya to assist the state in overcoming communist insurgency and border issues with Indonesia.
He revealed that his house was even raided by the police during the ‘Indonesian Confrontation’ period of 1963 to 1966 because his mother’s cousin, who lived together with them, opposed the formation of Malaysia and escaped to Indonesia.
“Back then, we always loitered around India Street and the surrounding places. All these places were full of soldiers and ‘orang putih’ (white people) and the vibrancy of the business was good.”
He said the city of Kuching was ‘looking like a country at war’ but he remembered that the night scene of the town was very lively as those ‘orang putih’ would be ‘haunting’ the nightclubs and drinking.
Wan Junaidi, who is today the federal Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Minister, said July 22 never occurred to him to be a significant day as the state was already pre-occupied with other pressing issues that needed to be dealt with during those time.
“After I left JKR and joined the police force, all I was concerned about was fighting the communists in the jungle. All these political things never bothered me. It never occurred to me that July 22 was any day of importance but later, August 31 became the most important compared to any other days because it was proclaimed as National Day.”
He then became very interested in the subject of laws, the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and the findings and reports concluded by the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) and Cobbold Commission, in relation to Sarawak agreeing to the formation of Malaysia.
“However, during the visit organised as part of the Cobbold Commission, I became well-aware of the sentiment of the people who quite disagreed with the formation of Malaysia.”
Wan Junaidi opined July 22 should be referred to as the day when Sarawak was granted self-governance, instead of independence, by the British before joining the federation of Malaysia.
He added that there were two important dates in Malaysia, namely August 31 (National Day) and Sept 16 (Malaysia Day), while July 22 never became a very critical date to him at that time as history records and the relevant laws had indicated July 22 was never really about independence.
“You can say anything you want (about Sarawak Independence Day) but to me personally, as a person who studied history based on the laws and facts, it is not an independence day. It is the date of self-governance for Sarawak.
“It is not independence day because you see, you cannot change the history. Whatever record you might make, you can change it but history you cannot change.”
Wan Junaidi remarked that history that is based on facts and law needs to be taught to the people, not only the current generation but future generations as well, and it had to be separated from political ideologies and feelings.
Asked then if the wording in the Sarawak Gazette should be amended to show that the state achieved self-governance instead of independence, he said: “Well, it’s up to the government. If there is a mistake in the Sarawak gazette or the words of the gazette, it ought to be rectified.”
July 22 has been officially gazetted as a public holiday to observe ‘Sarawak Independence Day’ since 2016.
If he was in charge of the Education Ministry, Wan Junaidi said he would instruct his officers to look into the subject related to the country’s history, so that students could be taught in-depth about the formation of Malaysia and rights and
interests of the Borneo states as enshrined in the federal constitution.
Nonetheless, Wan Junaidi said that July 22 should be regarded as an important historical day to all people of Sarawak as it was the moment when the state was handed over to its people to be administered.