Farewell to composed and consummate diplomat
RETIRED senior civil servant and highly-respected career diplomat Tan Sri Zakaria Hj Mohd Ali passed away peacefully at the National Heart Institute on April 10 after almost four months of hospitalisation for various health complications. He was 88.
Kuala Lumpur-born Zakaria was educated at Pasar Road School and Victoria Institution in his hometown. In 1950, he entered University of Malaya in Singapore and graduated with an honours degree in arts in 1954.
He then joined the Malayan Civil Service and served in district offices in Perak and Selangor until the beginning of 1957.
Some six months before Malaya obtained her independence, he was invited to join the country’s fledgling diplomatic service which was being set up under the wise guidance of our first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. An earlier batch of officers had been selected to undergo Foreign Service training in 1955 when Tunku Abdul Rahman became Chief Minister of the Federation of Malaya.
After receiving training at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1957, Zakaria was formally inducted into the Malaysian Foreign Service. His first overseas assignments were in London and New York.
In New York, he initially worked with Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman and later with Tun Omar Ong Yoke Lin. He also worked with two legal luminaries there, Dr Radhakrishnan Ramani and Tan Sri P. G. Lim, on issues confronting their young nation.
In 1962, Zakaria was one of the key members of the Malaysia Project headed by the then permanent secretary of Foreign Affairs, Datuk (later Tun) Muhammad Ghazali Shafie, a colourful and cerebral technocrat who went on to become a senior cabinet member. Zakaria worked closely with Ghazali for the rest of his career as the latter held several federal cabinet posts, ultimately becoming the Foreign Affairs Minister.
In 1970, Zakaria returned to New York as the Permanent Representative of Malaysia. He was also partly based in Ottawa with accreditation to Canada, spending time there when the UN was not in full session.
In June 1973, upon the instructions of the then Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, he initiated talks for the normalisation and establishment of mutual diplomatic relations between Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). His counterpart was the PRC’s Permanent Representative, the formidable Huang Hua who later had a notable tenure as China’s Foreign Minister and vice-premier.
In an article written in 2007, Zakaria spoke well of his team of officers who were involved in the discussions with the Chinese delegation for the normalisation talks. The team consisted of the late Tan Sri Zain Azraai, Datuk Khor Eng Hee and Tan Sri Ahmad Kamil Jaafar.
In March 1976, after serving for about 16 months as senior deputy secretary-general, he succeeded Tan Sri Zaiton Ibrahim as the secretary-general of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, a post he held until his retirement in 1984.
During this eight-year term, he put together an outstanding team of officers to handle the consolidation of Asean cooperation with the five founding members, the Vietnamese boat people issue and the fostering of closer rela- tions with China and Vietnam.
With the change of prime ministers in July 1981, Zakaria had to implement policies including the Look East initiative and the Antarctica Common Heritage of Mankind project. The difficult ones were the new prime minister’s initial contempt for Britain’s leadership of the Commonwealth, and the Buy British Last episode, where the Foreign Affairs Ministry had to maintain its circumspection and professional diplomacy.
Zakaria worked closely with all the first four prime ministers of the country.
After his retirement, he served as Malaysia’s High Commissioner to Australia.
Tan Sri Zainal Abidin Sulong, another grandee of our Foreign Service, succeeded him. Perhaps the greatest “Indonesianist” (and “Aseanist”) in our midst, Zainal Sulong was also a highly respected and resplendent personality.
One of the striking aspects of Zakaria’s leadership style was his capacity to delegate work to his trusted subordinates and colleagues and giving them clear instructions on a desired objective. While being a composed and consummate diplomat, he was a stickler for good conduct and high standards of integrity, political reporting and analyses. He was a no-nonsense boss who ran the Foreign Service as a soft-spoken and conscientious professional.
A keen golfer and aficionado for fine cuisine, Zakaria also had a good sense of humour. I recall an incident when the then United States ambassador to Malaysia, Robert H. Miller, presented his credentials to our sixth Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Tuanku Yahya Petra. Just after His Majesty had received the credentials and the Ambassador had reverted to his original position and taken a bow, the lights went off. Zakaria coolly turned to the ambassador and informed him that the power failure was not on the programme!
Malaysia was blessed to have this gentleman who had nobility of character, loyalty to his Malaysia, exceptional ability and tenacity to lead our country’s foreign service from the mid1970s to the early 1980s.
Zakaria is survived by his wife, Puan Sri Razimah, and a daughter.