SINGAPORE — Mr Othman Wok, a key member of the Old Guard whose unflinching support for the Government’s multi-racial stand helped the People’s Action Party (PAP) secure the Malay ground during the turbulent 1960s, has died at the age of 92.
Mr Othman, who had been a journalist, a union leader, a politician and an ambassador, passed away at Singapore General Hospital at 12.21pm on Monday (April 17), leaving behind four daughters from his two marriages. He had been ill for some time.
In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) described Mr Othman as “a key member of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s Cabinet, during the critical period when Singapore was in Malaysia, and then separated from Malaysia to become an independent republic”.
“He supported Mr Lee in the fight for a multi-racial and multi-religious Singapore, and became one of Mr Lee’s closest comrades,” the PMO added.
Mr Othman was among the leaders who signed the Independence of Singapore Agreement on Aug 9, 1965. He was Singapore’s first Social Affairs Minister from 1963 to 1977. With his death, Mr Ong Pang Boon and Mr Jek Yeun Thong are the only two surviving members of Singapore’s first Cabinet.
The son of a Malay school principal who attended English-medium schools, Mr Othman’s contributions include helping to establish the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis) and the Mosque Building Fund. He was also the man who saw to the construction of the National Stadium.
Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had said this of Mr Othman’s loyalty and staunch support amid racially polarising times: “Because of the courage and the leadership you showed, not one PAP (People’s Action Party) Malay leader wavered and that made the difference to Singapore.”
Born to school principal Wok Ahmad and housewife Embon Mohamad, the former minister worked as a radio technician on East Coast Road, before joining Malay-language newspaper Utusan Melayu. The journalist went on to become a union leader, a politician and an ambassador.
He held a firm belief in multiracialism, something he attributed to his education in an English school. “Going to an English school changes my life; for the first time, I was in a school with members of other races. This was where I got my multi-racial outlook,” he wrote in his biography
But multiracialism was still an unfamiliar concept then. In his formal entry into politics in 1959, Mr Othman lost his first election race in Kampong Kembangan to the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), who had a stronghold in predominantly Malay constituencies.
He was called an infidel, a traitor to the Malay community, and even had his election posters smeared with faeces.
Yet, he continued working the ground and won over the people in Pasir Panjang in 1963 by less than 1,000 votes.
After winning the seat, he resigned from Utusan Melayu to become Singapore’s first Minister of Social Affairs.
On his involvement in politics, Mr Othman said: “I thought I’d just be an ordinary Malay chap working in a radio shop … I never thought I’d become a union leader, or that I would become one of the founding members of the PAP.”
As the Cabinet’s only Malay minister then, Mr Othman was among the leaders who had signed the Independence of Singapore Agreement on Aug 7, 1965 to separate from Malaysia.
Recalling the day’s events in his biography, Mr Othman wrote that he drove Mr S Rajaratnam to Kuala Lumper to meet with Mr Lee, Mr Toh Chin Chye and other members of the Cabinet.
The late Mr Lee had called him into the next room and asked if he would sign the Separation Agreement. He said he would, but also asked what would happen to the communists in Singapore. Mr Lee told him not to worry because he would handle them.
The separation was a relief to Mr Othman: “Separation to me meant less pressure. As a Malay PAP minister, I had been in a difficult position. With the separation, I thought that it would be much easier for me and everyone else to get on with the job.”
Following Singapore’s independence, Mr Othman was also was tasked with convincing the Malays that they would be looked after despite being a minority race.
As he oversaw the Malay-Muslim community, he not only set up Muis but also the Mosque Building Fund, where Muslim workers contributed a small sum from their monthly salary to build mosques in new towns.
He was also responsible for encouraging sports among Singaporeans, even pushing for the National Stadium to be built, which was not an easy task at a time when people were preoccupied with bread-and-butter issues.
As he did so, Mr Othman became the pioneer in getting Singaporeans to develop a “rugged society” — a term the current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong revisited in his National Day Rally in 2015.
But his political work and his wife Cik Dah’s illness took a toll on his first marriage. He later met a divorcee Lina Abdullah and married her secretly in 1975.
Two years into his second marriage, he was posted as an ambassador to Indonesia while retaining his position as a minister. When the late Mr Lee found out about his marital situation, he gave Mr Othman the go-ahead to work in Indonesia, but added that if he could not solve his problems, he had to “pack up”.
During his three-year stint as an ambassador, his main job was to improve bilateral relations between Singapore and Indonesia, particularly after Singapore’s hanging of the two Indonesian marine commandos responsible for the 1965 bombing of MacDonald House in Orchard in 1968. That explosion, which killed three people and injured at least 33 others, was carried out as part of Indonesia’s Konfrontasi with Malaysia.
Despite his contributions as an ambassador, Mr Othman was unhappy with his predicament with his two wives and chose to retire in 1981.
“I decided to retire because at that time, the PAP was looking for new blood, so I wrote a letter to the PM giving two reasons: One was the need for new blood and the other was because I could not solve my personal problems,” he said.
After retiring from politics, he became a board member on the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board and the Sentosa Development Corporation.
Rediscovering his love for writing again, Mr Othman also penned ghost stories for the Malaysian Utusan Melayu until 1987. He went on to publish three compilations of his horror stories: Malayan Horror, Cerita-cerita Seram, and Unseen Occupants and Other Chilling Tales in addition to his biography.
While looking back at his contributions in his biography, Mr Othman said: “Where my contribution to Singapore is concerned, I leave it for others to judge me. I think I’ve done the best that I could do. What Singapore has to be proud of is not the work of any one person. It took not just Cabinet ministers or MPs but the entire people of Singapore to bring us to where we are today.”
Mr Othman will be buried at Choa Chu Kang Muslim Cemetery on Tuesday. The PMO said the Government will accord Mr Othman the honour of being borne on the Ceremonial Gun Carriage for his final journey from Sultan Mosque to Pusara Abadi at the Choa Chu Kang Muslim Cemetery.
A Memorial Service will be organised by OnePeople.sg on Wednesday. The Government has ordered the State flag on all Government buildings to be flown at half-mast till the completion of the Memorial Service.
