IT was quite a shock to have received news that an Indonesia friend, Saiful Hadi Chalid, had passed away last Monday, Oct 16. News of his death came via mobile text messages from Malaysian and Indonesia journalists who knew him and his family.
Most of us knew that he was unwell, but we did not know the extent of his ailment. Only when photographs of him getting treatment at the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital, where he was warded, did we realise that this once-cheerful man was in a far more critical situation than we had thought.
A few friends visited him at the hospital. Pak Saiful used the visit to pass greetings to friends who were unable to make it.
“Kirim salam kepada sahabat-sahabat di Malaysia,” he said.
(Convey my greetings to friends in Malaysia).
Even on his death bed, Pak Saiful was thinking about his friends — a reflection of a person who valued friendship very much.
Pak Saiful, a cheerful man of only 56 years, succumbed to a combination of ailments, including kidney failure and lung infection.
He passed on at the hospital with his wife, Rina Hermina, by his side. At the time of his death, he had lost some 20kg, a point he had privately joked about with me.
“I need to reduce my weight by at least 20kg,” he said when I last met him in Maluku, Ambon, earlier this year for the annual Indonesian National Press Day. Pak Saiful would make it almost his personal duty to invite Malaysian journalists to join this event.
Pak Saiful was the senior adviser to Antara, the Indonesian News Agency, at the time of his death. He had served as Antara’s financial director, chief editor and chief executive officer before that.
According to a number of fellow journalists from Indonesia, he was more than a senior adviser, financial director, chief editor and chief executive officer.
He was an activist, whose vision included strengthening the bilateral relations between Malaysia and Indonesia. It was almost as if that was his private calling — to get the two neighbours closer together.
During a visit to Jakarta a few years ago, Pak Saiful whispered to me: “Pak Ahmad, kita kena kerja keras untuk mengeratkan lagi silaturahme antara Malaysia dan Indonesia.”
(Pak Ahmad, we must work hard to improve ties between our countries).
No doubt that Malaysia and Indonesia have their differences. But, Pak Saiful was of the opinion that such differences were only to be expected between close friends.
After all, we had strong social, economical, political and cultural attachments for as long as we could recall, he said.
I got to know him when he was the chairman of the Indonesia chapter of the “Ikatan Setiakawan Wartawam Indonesia Malaysia” and I was his counterpart.
We met several times to discuss and implement programmes aimed at strengthening the bond between our two nations. He was a firm believer that people-to-people relationships were crucial in forging meaningful ties between the two countries.
When I read up a bit on Pak Saiful, I learned that service to the nation was not new to his family. His father, Idham Chalid, was a cabinet member in Indonesia when Suharto was president in the late 1960s and 1970s.
In fact, his father had also served under president Sokarno as a cabinet member with contemporaries, such Adam Malik and Hamengkubuwono. Therefore, it was not strange or unusual for him to follow in his father’s footsteps, albeit on a different platform.
I recall an obituary written by one of his closest friends, Asro Kamal Rokan.
He said: “Orang baik itu sudah pergi selamanya. Dia dikenang tidak hanya sebagai pemimpin, wartawan, pelobi yang baik, tetapi sebagai saudara.”
(The good man is gone forever. He will be remembered not just as a leader, journalist and a great lobbyist, but also as a close friend and a member of the family.)
He was buried next to his mother at Pesantren Darul Maarif in Cisarua, Bogor.
Moga-moga arwah dicucuri rahmat.
Twitter: @aatpahitmanis
Ahmad A Talib is chairman of Yayasan Salam Malaysia.