This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on August 8, 2022 - August 14, 2022

Usop, a long-time friend of mine, had an admirable career in journalism and corporate communications. He is an able multitasker too, as a political communications strategist, that is. Advising and strategising for politicians is his strength, as he is in touch with grassroots politics. As a former journalist, he has seen many big battles being fought and how political strategists manoeuvre for their “masters”.

The thing that sets Usop apart from many other political communicators I know is that he likes to help politicians whom he thinks can contribute positively to the development of the nation, even if they are in the opposition.

A couple of months before the March 2008 general election, I got a call from Usop. “Bro, we have to help Khalid.”

“Khalid, who?” I asked.

“Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim. He might be an able corporate man but he’s politically naïve. He is still a novice in politics. He needs help. Some of his corporate ex-staff will be on the team too,” Usop said, to persuade me.

I am no communications strategist like Usop, but Khalid, who passed away on July 31, was a friendly and approachable CEO whom I had interviewed many times during his stint as CEO of Permodalan Nasional Bhd — the government-owned fund management company that runs the largest unit trusts in the country — and plantation company Kumpulan Guthrie.

Khalid was a likeable person and easy to interview. He would give you good quotes, and always took time to explain things that you didn’t understand. Even when The Edge was an unknown newspaper, when we were launched in July 1994, he did not turn us down for an interview.

We got him for our July 25 Preview issue, and he was the subject of our cover story for Issue 6 (Oct 10, 1994), where he was unfazed by talk that the golden handshake that accompanied his move from PNB — in the form of a small stake in Guthrie that made him the CEO — might have lost most its shine and that the then government might want to take another look at the deal.

As a journalist, as much as I wanted to remain outside the political realm, I agreed with Usop that Khalid needed some help. Less than a year earlier, he had contested on a PKR ticket as a close friend of opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in a state by-election in Ijok, Selangor.

Khalid was the iconic corporate candidate for PKR in a Malay-majority seat. He was a familiar face to the community as the man behind PNB’s popular Amanah Saham Bumiputera unit trust scheme. However, he lost to Barisan Nasional’s candidate K Parthiban of MIC. That was his introduction to real politics, where he learnt that his corporate image did not mean much to the voters.

When we arrived at his house in Bukit Damansara, we were ready with the strategy. A lecturer friend had prepared a voters’ profile of the Kapar parliamentary seat, which he was expected to contest for the first time, apart from trying for the Ijok state seat again.

Khalid was his affable, boisterous self, but we reminded him that in politics, the end-game of contesting was to win, nothing else. And be prepared to run a “dirty” (but legal) campaign against your opponent.

He was firm in wanting to win, and well aware that one could not just leave it to fate but had to work hard to win. As for running a dirty campaign, even if the need arose, Khalid was non-committal. He believed one should win in a fair manner.

But we were satisfied with his commitment to win the fight — a positive and important first step in an election. He showed that he was not the reluctant political candidate that the opposition had put up, as some, including the ruling BN coalition, had tried to paint him as.

As we were about to present him with the briefing on the Kapar parliamentary seat, Khalid interjected: “No, I’m not contesting in Kapar as speculated. I will contest in Bandar Tun Razak, and here is the strategy...”

Bandar Tun Razak, explained Khalid, was a parliamentary seat sandwiched between Seputeh and Cheras, which were the strongholds of the DAP, PKR’s alliance partner in the opposition. Since DAP was never going to lose in Seputeh and Cheras, both incumbents, Teresa Kok and Tan Kok Wai, would spend more time campaigning for him in Bandar Tun Razak. In turn, he would campaign for DAP and Teresa in the Kinrara state seat, a BN stronghold.

The moment he explained this, I told the advisory team that we had underestimated Khalid’s political acumen: “There you have it. We are seeing a seasoned politician in the making. With that strategy, Bandar Tun Razak — which is another BN stronghold — is a possible win for PKR.”

Khalid went on to win both seats in the 2008 general election and became the Selangor menteri besar after Pakatan Rakyat (the coalition of PKR, DAP and PAS) captured the state assembly. PR also captured the Kinrara state seat. Khalid was a well-liked MB.

To me, he was always a practical man who acted based on reason and was not too emotional, always thinking of the best outcome when faced with a situation, and inclined towards coming up with win-win solutions.

His practical side was evident in his corporate dealings too. For example, when he became the CEO of Kumpulan Guthrie, he made value creation his main task. Right away, he worked on how to add value to what was basically a plantation company. He wanted Guthrie to diversify and be a conglomerate like Sime Darby.

In an interview with The Edge in December 1995, Khalid said Guthrie should be a key player in property (which was logical because of its huge land bank in the Klang Valley) and move into transportation and finance. These were areas he was familiar with, as during his days with PNB, he was involved in the rehabilitation of transport company Kontena Nasional and financial institution Kompleks Kewangan.

As Guthrie had a huge land bank in prime areas, however, property development was the faster route for it to kick-start the diversification plan. Guthrie’s first large-scale property venture, in the form of the Bukit Jelutong township on the outskirts of Shah Alam, was a huge success.

But the move to build a highway and become a toll concessionaire for the Guthrie Corridor Expressway (GCE) was heavily criticised. Built then at a cost of RM750 million, it was considered as one diversification that went too far, as it had no expertise in the business, nor would the traffic volume for the highway that connected Shah Alam to Rawang give a fast return on investment. And that was besides the debt it carried.

Ever the practical man, Khalid argued that the GCE would in the end pay for itself, not through the traffic volume but the revaluation of Guthrie’s plantation land. Once the GCE was completed and the conversion of these assets along the highway — estimated at 11,650 acres — into residential and commercial land was attained, Guthrie would be sitting on a gold mine. 

After Bukit Jelutong, Guthrie went on to develop Denai Alam. Following the completed merger of PNB plantation companies in 2008, this development became part of Sime Darby’s 5,000-acre City of Elmina project. This township alone has a gross development value of RM27 billion. Today, the GCE, just as Khalid had envisaged when he was CEO, has added much value to Guthrie’s (now Sime Darby’s) plantation assets. This will continue for many years to come as Sime Darby develops more projects along the Guthrie Corridor.

As a corporate man and politician, Khalid has been described as a firm leader. What he brought to the Selangor state administration was his vast corporate experience — not only being concerned about the welfare of the rakyat but also ensuring that state-owned companies were benchmarked against the commercial and accounting standards of private and listed companies.

Prudent spending was his way of managing the state’s coffers, and that did increase cash reserves. But there was always pressure from the party and its coalition partners to spend more on projects that benefitted the rakyat (and voters, by extension), even if it did not make financial sense.

One Selangor parliamentarian described him as “a no-nonsense go-getter corporate man, never willing to compromise on doing what is right”.

Perhaps this set him apart from the “normal” politician, who has to be a party man, always seeing the party’s bigger picture and accepting the fact that in a political set-up, no one is bigger than the party itself. While wanting to manage the state his way, the practical man in the end got caught up in the impractical side of politics, which led to his being sacked from the party in 2014.

To many, however, what matters most was that Khalid was a good man who meant well.

Azam Aris is editor emeritus at The Edge

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