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FOR LOVE OF KING AND COUNTRY: REFLECTION ON
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AS A MALAYSIAN DIPLOMAT

Foreign Ministry in Berne, Switzerland. What a relief!

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia the story was dif erent. T ere I was caught
when the Embassy did not have any communication devices installed at that
time. We had just set up a diplomatic mission there. I had to ‘borrow’ the
International Telegraphic Codebook from the British Embassy there and I
was able to send a coded message to the Ministry relating the incidents that
had taken place in the war-torn capital.

Advice on Diplomatic Reporting
What advice for the young? Much would depend on your language skills
and personal preferences. A good advice to heed is to avoid pedantics and
rhetorics. (T e late) Tan Sri Zain Azraai, whom I was with in Washington
DC, said we should go for the Readers Digest style.

Tan Sri Razali Ismail added on another occasion, why he had to reject a draft
of a report submitted to him for approval,

“T is is the English of a secondary school student”.

“T is is too classical. ‘Macaulay-ish’, ‘Shakespearian’ and ‘Trivial’ ….”

We were advised to follow the style opted by (the late) Tan Sri Zainal Abidin
Sulong, to make them ‘crispy and precise’, yet ‘meaty’.

Designs at Grand Diplomacy
In the realm of Grand Diplomacy, I wanted to share two episodes that have
remained indelible in my memory. I believe that from time to time we need
to recall some of these that for the love of King and Country, as the country’s
frontliners and the ‘f rst line of defence’, diplomats must have a sense of
grandeur and passion at their tasks.

It was related to me that when (the late) Dato’ Ismail Ambia, our former
Ambassador to Cambodia, was trying to convince his Indonesian colleague
of the need to persuade the warring factions in Cambodia to come to the
negotiation table, he appealed to his Indonesian colleague to refer to the
Indonesian sense of history and their implicit interest in trying to take the

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