SINGAPORE: Mr Othman Wok, a former Cabinet minister and one of Singapore’s first generation of leaders, died on Monday (Apr 17) at the age of 92. 

A journalist, union leader, politician and ambassador, Mr Othman’s courage and convictions made a difference to Singapore at a critical time in its history, said the late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Born in 1924, Mr Othman was the son of a Malay school principal. Despite objections from his grandfather, his progressive father sent the young Othman to Radin Mas School and Raffles Institution – both English-medium schools.

Mr Othman joined the Utusan Melayu, a Malay-language newspaper as a clerk, but was soon talent-spotted and offered a job as a cub reporter by its editor and managing director Mr Yusof Ishak, the man who was to become Singapore’s first President.

Mr Othman Wok in his youth.

While Mr Othman was working for Utusan Melayu, he became involved in union activities, and it was as Secretary of the Singapore Printing Employees Union that he first met Mr Lee Kuan Yew – the union’s legal advisor.

Persuaded to enter politics, he joined the People’s Action Party (PAP) a few days after it was formed in 1954. 

Mr Othman won his first electoral battle in 1963, but was to learn that achieving racial harmony was easier said than done.

Following Singapore’s merger with Malaysia, racial tensions between the Malay and Chinese communities, stoked by fiery speeches by extremist Malay leaders from Kuala Lumpur, came to a head during the 1964 procession to celebrate the Prophet Mohamed’s birthday. 

“UMNO had a meeting on Jul 19 at Pasir Panjang, (a) talk about racialism and all that by Jafar Albar. He made a very strong communal speech at that gathering which included UMNO members from across the Causeway that they ferried down to Singapore by buses and lorries,” recalled Mr Othman. “And these people, after that meeting on the 19th, didn’t go home … they were used to cause trouble.”

Mr Othman, who led the contingent of Malay MPs and PAP supporters at the procession, recalled how trouble broke out: “When my contingent arrived at Kallang Bridge, there was this old Chinese man on a bicycle, on the left side. Some Malay youths came from the front, caught hold of him, beat him up with sticks and threw his bicycle into the drain. He was severely injured.”

For the rest of Mr Othman’s life, the horrific images would return whenever he shared his experiences.

“People were being beaten up, houses were being burnt, vehicles being burnt – all pictured in my mind at that time. I was involved in it, I saw it with my own eyes,” he said. “It is just like a film being played again and again to me. I was very sad. This is racial riot between the communities, the Chinese and the Malays. And before that they were very friendly.”

In the aftermath of the riots, it was clear that concerted and strenuous efforts were needed to rebuild relationships between the races, as racial polarisation was evident, even at relief centres. 

“The Chinese didn’t go to where the Malays went – the police station; they went to other police stations, so became segregated again,” said Mr Othman. “And my ministry had to prepare food for these refugees. Every day we cooked, in our central kitchen, and I went around in our lorries together with my staff, and we found that for example, I went to Paya Lebar Police Station, they were all Malays there, no Chinese. Then I went to another police station, Serangoon at that time, they were all Chinese there, no Malays.

“So we decided after the riots that this should not go on – polarisation between the two communities. We had to let them live together. So at that time, we (were) building flats so we moved them, mixed (them) together. It was not an easy thing to do but eventually they began to learn how to live as good neighbours.”

At the height of the 1964 tensions, Mr Othman himself became the principal target of verbal abuse among some segments of the Malay-Muslim community.

The late Mr Lee Kuan Yew said of Mr Othman: “I remember your staunch loyalty during those troubled days when you were in Malaysia and the tensions were most severe, immediately before and following the bloody riots in July 1964. 

“At that time, the greatest pressures were mounted by UMNO Malay extremists who denounced you and Malay PAP leaders – especially you – as infidels, “kafirs” and traitors, “khianat”, not to Singapore but to the Malay race.

“I heard it, the crowds said it, bunches of them. They were designed to intimidate him and the other Malay leaders in PAP.

“Because of the courage and the leadership you showed, not one PAP Malay leader wavered and that made a difference to Singapore.” 

On the incident, Mr Othman simply said: “I was surprised, because not only I, but my Malay colleagues in the PAP stood together and faced the onslaught together with the Prime Minister, because we were fighting for what we believed in.

“So that accolade to me, I thought, was also for my colleagues because they faced the same danger, they faced the same accusation and criticism from the Malay community at that time.”

Mr Othman’s loyalty to Singapore was tested again in 1965, when they were faced with the critical decision to support or oppose separation from Malaysia. 

“PM called me. He said: ‘Othman, come with me to the next room.’ And he said to me: ‘Would you sign this separation agreement?’ I said I would. I told him: ‘PM, the only worry I have is the Chinese in Singapore – what I meant was the communists in Singapore.’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s my problem, I will handle it. You have nothing to worry.’ That was what he said to me.

“But my feeling when it was announced was, internally, you know, relief. After those two years of bickering, the pressure on me, my colleagues, the Malays in the PAP, on the government, I say it was a relief. No more pressure against us.”

And the next year, when an independent Singapore held its first National Day Parade, Mr Othman made sure he was there – a proud member of the People’s Defence Force. 

Mr Othman was to serve for 17 years, 14 of them as Minister for Social Affairs.

Promoting racial harmony was a key responsibility, as was the promotion of sports among the masses and encouraging athletes to represent Singapore.

Said SS Dhillon, former secretary-general of the Singapore Olympic Council: “Mr Othman Wok – I always to refer to him as Mr Cool. He has a very cool personality, he is very approachable, very kind, very loving and he used to go around sportsmen and coax them to participate. Train harder and he encouraged them in that way.”

It was also Mr Othman who got the National Stadium built. 

“When you think back to those times, those were very economically hard times, and yet he could push this through Parliament and get it passed,” said former Olympian sprinter C Kunalan. “So I think more importantly it was not how he fired us up but how he fired up the Cabinet to get the approval for all the plans that he had.”

As Minister overseeing the Malay-Muslim community, Mr Othman’s legacy includes the setting up of the Mosque Building Fund as well as the Islamic Religious Council or MUIS, which sees to the welfare of Muslims in Singapore.

“Through this fund, we managed to build a first mosque at Toa Payoh,” said Mr Othman. “A modern, better, multi-purpose mosque, not like the old ones, only for prayer; (there were) other activities. And people came to support and it was not difficult to get people to contribute. We had the contribution by deducting their salaries, voluntarily if they wanted to, through the CPF. It started with S$0.50. They could write in to say: ‘I don’t want to contribute’, but the majority, all I think the Muslims who worked with the Government then, contributed and they were able to build one mosque after another.”

After retiring from active politics in 1980, Mr Othman served as Singapore’s ambassador to Indonesia and also on the Singapore Tourism Board and Sentosa Development Corporation. 

The born storyteller also published his collections of horror stories as well as his autobiography, Never In My Wildest Dreams.

But for the man who lived through the race riots of the 1960s, unity among Singaporeans was an enduring mission, and Mr Othman continued to serve well into his 80s, giving talks on National Education to civil servants. 

“Even with this terrorism problem, some of these young people do not take it seriously because it has not happened in Singapore,” said Mr Othman. “The test will come when a bomb explodes in Singapore, people are killed … What happens, do we tighten our bonding, become a united front of faith or we disintegrate? This is the test that we have to face if the real thing happens. I hope not. Because today when there are disasters in other countries, Singapore came together to help. I am sure were this to happen in Singapore, we will get together, to face it and solve it. I have that confidence.”

He added: “Always be loyal to your country. You’re a Singaporean, you will always be a Singaporean.”

Mr Othman leaves his wife and four daughters.

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.