Dr Syed Husin Ali's take on May 13

Dr Syed Husin Ali, former UM sociologist and anthropologist, and currently deputy president of PKR, was one of the speakers during launch of Dr Kua's new book on May 13, 1969. It is interesting to note of his disagreement with Dr Kua's conclusion that the riot was a staged coup d'etat by Umno elites, but rather the unfortunate event was taken advantage to stage one.

“There was certainly a stroke or blow against Tunku which ultimately resulted in his removal from power. It was successful, but certainly not a sudden move.”

“To me it appeared that what Razak (former prime minister Tun Abdul Razak) and others did was to take advantage of the ethnic violence which took place, in order to carry out the coup against Tunku, whom they were already dissatisfied with, anyhow.”

“But I have little doubt that the people who precipitated the ethnic violence were Umno leaders who felt threatened they would lose power. But they could get mass Malay support because they managed to spin that if they lose power, it would mean that the Malays as a whole would lose power,” said the former president of Party Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia.

(source: Malaysiakini)

Just goes to show how writing history is at most times such a difficult exercise as different perspectives and interpretation can be made, usually even over the same facts and figures. Having read Dr Ooi's biography of Tun Dr Ismail recently, it does give me the impression that the riot wasn't really planned by the Umno highest level leaders. Calling for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate this watershed incident in the history of our nation could potentially close this chapter once and for all in a satisfactory manner, but as what Rustam A Sani observed in his blog, if the terms of reference of the Commission is not defined carefully, the end result could be nothing more than just opening up old racist wounds and having no means to move forward, or worse, speed up our reverse.