Chau Tet On cut a demure figure. But his smiling face camouflaged 10 years or more of frustrations that his politics had come to nought. Few ethnic Chinese looked to his leadership despite he being the first among them to become a Sabah deputy chief minister in 1985 in Joseph Pairin Kitingan’s government. His Parti Bersatu Sabah had swept to power, defeating the unpopular Parti Berjaya in a state general election.
It is easy to see why. Chau was one of those new guards of the now defunct Sabah Chinese Association which was very influential because Sabah ethnic Chinese, although forming about 10% of the state’s then one million people who comprised indigenous Kadazan-dusuns and Malays, held the balance of political power in the early years of independence from Britain. But that power was to slip through Chau’s hands as new electoral constituencies were created that diluted ethnic Chinese political power.
The PBS being a multi-racial party gave little room for ethnic aspirations. And Chau, like his other ethnic Chinese comrades, grew more subservient to their Kadazan-dusun party president.
In his party and government, being Pairin’s deputy, he was regarded an ethnic Chinese leader despite challenges from factional rivals. But his stature paled into insignificance to those of the early SCA’s leaders: Hong Teck Guan, Khoo Siak Chew, Peter Lo Su Yin and Pang Tet Tshung.
His defection, twice in two months in 1994, first from the PBS to the Liberal Democratic Party and then to the Malaysian Chinese Association, sounded the death knell to his political career.
Through Chau’s defection, the MCA got its first assembly seat in Sabah. But his death yesterday at 78 of diabetes was greeted with no more than a whimper in MCA. Its president Liow Tiong Lai is away in the Middle East. He conveyed his condolences to Chau’s widow and daughter through his deputy Wee Ka Siong who flew to Kota Kinabalu to pay his last respects. Anyway, Wee is the Sabah MCA boss. But there was not even a tweet from Liow of Chau’s passing – yet he found it opportune to tweet his best wishes to Malaysian pilgrims to Mecca.
To Chau’s credit, he had done some good work in Chinese education and culture: getting both Sabah and Federal governments to fund Chinese independent schools to the tune of RM50 million and introducing the annual dragon boat race.
Sabah Insights 