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MALAYSIAN DIPLOMATS: OUR STORIES

like the bloggers of today. It takes a lot of creative juices to f ll up the many
pages of our so-called Reports. T ere are the frequent outpourings of the
substance of high dramas as well as the narrations of desperate peoples
caught in the ‘crossf res’ of other peoples’ f ghts. On top of that, there is our
motto: as diplomats we are expected to always remain ‘diplomatic’.

I tried to remember what some of the Ambassadors that I had worked with,
had said on what it was like to be a good diplomat and ‘being diplomatic’.
Very early on Tan Sri Razali Ismail, considered as our most prominent
Representative at the United Nations, had remarked to me,

“Don’t give me the nitty-gritty. Go for the big picture”.

Talking about what is the nature of the diplomat’s job, (the late) Tan Sri
Zainal Abidin Sulong told a group of us once, that as diplomats we must
worry about the day-to-day things, the events, the people involved, and the
current situation in the reporting country. We do not have time for the
long-term perspective for the country or countries involved. He was asking
us to be concerned more with ad-hoc reporting rather than with lengthy and
erudite thought pieces. From (the late) Tan Sri Zain Azraai I heard him say
at one of our one-to-one meetings that,

“If there is a good story to tell we must tell that to our people”

Reporting Home
While at post we will always want to be the f rst to alert the Ministry
about current developments in the various capitals we are in. Compared
to the present-day trappings of Internet communications that have really
revolutionised the way we are able to reach home within seconds, the situation
in the early days of my diplomatic career was far from being complete. We
were provided with only the minimal telephone lines during times of crisis.
We could only rely on our good judgement and sheer ingenuity to get us
through the dif cult task of reporting back home.

When I was serving in Bangladesh, I needed to send an urgent message to
the Ministry giving details about the military coup that had happened then.
I was of ered help to have our messages sent to Kuala Lumpur via the Swiss

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