Heartfelt goodbye to an old friend, colleague
Friday was a troubling day for me. After a short spell of hospitalisation at the National Heart Institute, Datuk Mohd Redzuan Mohd Kushairi, a lifelong friend, colleague and collaborator, died seven months short of his 70th birthday.
We had our early education at the King Edward VII School (in Taiping) and later enrolled for an arts degree at Universiti Malaya. Upon graduating, Redzuan joined the Malaysian foreign service in April 1972 and served in various capacities at Wisma Putra and at Malaysian diplomatic missions in Moscow, Washington D.C., Addis Ababa, London and New York, and finally as Malaysia’s first ambassador to Uzbekistan.
These postings enabled Redzuan to get to know and interact with the Merdeka and pioneer generation of diplomatic luminaries, including Tun Ghazali Shafie, Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen, Tan Sri Zakaria Mohd Ali, Tan Sri Zainal Abidin Sulong, Tan Sri Zain Azraai and Tan Sri Razali Ismail.
As a Russian language speaker, he enjoyed any opportunity to meet other Russian speakers and his ambassadorial posting in Uzbekistan with concurrent accreditation to other Central Asian countries was a satisfying assignment for him.
Redzuan was, however, an universalist and a high achiever, and a staid ambassadorship held little novelty for him after 2½ decades of diplomacy. He had always felt fervently about issues of public interest and respect for the rule of law.
He opted to enter the corporate and non-governmental world in the mid-1990s. Despite the rough terrain he faced initially, he dedicated himself to promoting different sets of networks involving think tanks, youth, academia, civil societies, media and cultural organisations, especially in the Asean region.
Between 2010 and 2014 Redzuan, I, Razali Ismail and Datuk Mokhtar Selat ran the Foreign Policy Study Group, a nongovernmental organisation dedicated to building people-to-people relations in the Asean region.
We established a framework for close ties with retired senior diplomats in all the Asean countries and through these contacts established links with universities in Thailand and Indonesia. We were able to attract youth and media Asean representatives to participate in seminars to foster mutual understanding in the region.
Redzuan always kept a good and well-appointed home which made Malaysia proud as he was a charming and generous host, not unlike his two well-respected G25 members who predeceased him, Mokhtar and Datuk Latifah Merican Cheong.
It is sad that the G25 has lost three of its distinguished members, who served the country under the second, third, fourth and fifth prime ministers.
Golf was a lifelong passion for tech-savvy Redzuan, who constantly made investments in information technology gadgets.
His greatest passion was reading, especially on global politics, and he spent a fortune on books and artworks.
He was everyone’s friend with his trademark conviviality, and as one of the country’s brightest diplomats, he could often punch above his weight.
The country has lost a great soul, a friend to all and a mentor to our younger generation of diplomats and civil servants. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.