Malaysia had activist opposition figures as Mr Puthucheary, but the communist insurrection in 1948 and its viewing by the politically dominant Malay community as a Malay-Chinese quarrel, which in more senses than one it was, reduced their contribution to a seemingly irrelevant marginal role, especially when the government regarded them, willy nilly, as adjuncts to the Chinese socialist and leftist opposition. This must, down the road, cause the government to falter, as it threatens to now. But losers do not loom large in the history books written by victors. The PAP in Singapore had to exorcise its socialist and pro-communist ghosts to create a bogey of a seige mentality and to removal all vestiges of a leftist opposition. But not ignored.
Time does mellow the most violent of opposition.
So when James Puthucheary asked for, and received, permission to attend the funeral of Mrs Joyce Kuok, the wife of his childhood friend, Mr Robert Kuok, in Singapore, several of his political enemies, including the former deputy prime minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee, called on him. I doubt if he ever thought of it that way. He once told me many viewed him as Sisyphus, the king of Corinth condemned in Tartarus to roll a huge stone ceaselessup up a hill. He insisted he had no regrets, that he undertook his lonely Sisyphean path willingly. He would rationalise everything intellectually, even his own failings, with such brutal frankness that one must accept that his belief in his Sisyphean toil came from within him.