THOSE of you with a long Tanjung Aru connection will remember the 15 acres that used to be called Hone Place, beside the Casurina Hotel. Named after second post-war Colonial Governor Sir Ralph Hone, it was where all the important mat sallehs and high ranking civil servants lived before independence.
Historically, Hone Place was also where surrendering Japanese soldiers were interned prior to deportation after the war.
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It was originally not intended to be a park but to house 10 blocks of low cost high-rise units for 5,000 squatter families.
Everything to ensure this was concluded before the tenure of the two-year rotation of one of the chief ministers had ended.
In Sabah, the public is often the last to know, more so under past administrations. They were usually informed after the ink on the agreements had dried.
So, when the project became public knowledge, the Daily Express carried numerous reports about the controversial decision. The plan was to house not Sabah’s indigenous poor but mostly “new Malaysians” who had to be relocated to make way for the expansion of the Kota Kinabalu International Airport.
The affected folks comprised both those holding genuine as well as fake documents. The latter were those who were desperate and bought what they believed were genuine but scammed by syndicates who charged them RM500 per document in some cases.
Although there were arrests, only these people were charged in court. Not those senior officials in the NRD who just served detention under the abolished Internal Security Act (ISA). These new arrivals told the court when charged with possession of fake identification documents that they thought it was part of “Projeck IC or Mahathir” (as both these words were used interchangeably in court).
When I brought this to the attention of the former PM in his Sutera Harbour Executive Suite after he stepped down the first time, he parried it in his usual manner saying many things were done using his name, without his knowledge.
The idea that 5,000 of them – excluding the total number in each unit eventually – would occupy the most expensive piece of real estate in Sabah was unacceptable to genuine Sabahans.
But not to certain politicians of a party who saw it as their “fixed deposit” and the chance to finally wrest the seat from Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) which was then in the opposition. And, hopefully, alter the demography of Kota Kinabalu. The opposers were against the project purely because of the location, not because they felt these folks did not deserve any shelter.
Their argument was that they would be better housed in another part of the municipality (KK was then not yet a city) rather than where Time magazine described as the third best spot on this planet to watch magnificent sunsets after Arizona in the US and Mumbai in India.
Anyway, up to that point, the politicians of this party won the day and a billboard describing the project and the list of consultant firms involved soon went up at the site.
That’s when the inevitable happened – and convinced me that despite the odds, if you believe in doing something for the common good rather than for selfish reasons, you would triumph.
One Saturday morning soon after the project specs went up, a Mat Salleh dropped by at our former Tg Aru office seeking to discuss an urgent matter. He happened to be the General Manager of the nearby Shangrila Tg Aru Resort, Sabah’s only such facility.
He pleaded that being an influential paper, Daily Express should do a story on the ill-advised decision to build 5,000 PPRT units on Sabah’s most valuable site and be the neighbour to a world famous resort.
After listening to him, I said we already did our best to get the State Government to reconsider the project to the extent of being regarded as “unfriendly” and having our newspaper subscription in government offices and government advertisements cancelled for pursuing this matter and another about a RM40 million water meter scandal.
At that time, there was no such thing as epaper and we depended a lot on government subscriptions and advertisements. When the subscriptions and government ads were stopped, it hit us badly.
To their credit, my management refused to be bowed. When I discussed the matter with my lady General Manager, she said ‘so long as we are doing the right thing, we need only be answerable to the people and not to politicians who come and go’.
This has always been the “apostles creed” of the paper’s founder, the late Tan Sri Yeh Pao Tze, the doyen of Sabah’s newspaper industry, back when he co-founded the Sabah Times back in 1952. The GM’s request was also ironic because his resort did not subscribe to our paper.
A copy is slipped into rooms only if guests requested it.
The preference was for a cheaper imitation. But here he was seated before me and indirectly asking us to save his resort, which was 51pc was owned by the State Government through Yayasan Sabah. The rest was sold to billionaire Robert Kuok during PBS time, as were many other assets. I recall Tun Musa Aman when he was Chief Minister telling me that when he was heading Yayasan Sabah, an aide of Kuok tried to talk him into selling the remaining stake as well.
The reason cited was that tourism was on the decline in Sabah and it was much better for the State Government to let go the remaining stake.
Musa in his candour told off the aide that if “Robert Kuok seriously thinks tourism in Sabah is doomed, why is he desperate for the entire stake?” The matter ended there. Truth be told that this is not the only Sabah asset which Musa has saved for future generations.
Another is the Desa cattle farm in Kundasang which if he had not rushed lawyer the late Anthony Koshy the same morning to stop its sale, would today be the proud asset of a successful dairy entrepreneur.
What this mat salleh GM whose name I cannot recall was saying was that if the low-cost project went ahead, no tourist would want to come as the picture-postcard beach would be swarmed by mostly immigrant kids families and that Tg Aru would see a rise in addicts and undesirables.
He said many of his foreign guests pay top dollar to enjoy the sunset, strolling or cycling to Tg Aru town and would feel unsafe. Being tourists, they would likely be harrassed for money or, worse, robbed. His fears were not misplaced.
After he left, I gave it some thought and decided there was nothing to lose in giving it one final try. I discussed it with our dedicated conservationist and award-winning writer Kan Yaw Chong, who was equally depressed that all our reports to prevent the federal-funded project amounted to nothing and of what Sabahans stand to lose forever now that it was going ahead.
Kan agreed that Daily Express should not simply give up and went to the site with his trusty old camera for one last story.
He took pictures, interviewed residents, tourists and players in the industry about what would happen that could change peaceful Tg Aru forever.
The result the following Monday was a front page report with nearly a half-page colour picture of Hone Place complete with iconic raintrees being felled by bulldozers.
This time, we were in luck.
The rotation system of the chief ministership was never tried anywhere in Malaysia but Sabah, which has often served as a political laboratory of sorts. Prime Minister Dr Mahathir decided on the rotation system after his Barisan Nasional wrested power from PBS with the help of “political frogs” in 1994.
Firstly, it is never provided for in the State Constitution but, as we all know, Mahathir was the law. The rotation was responsible for the coffers being almost empty before the next person took over political cronies laughing their way to the bank with lop-sided contracts.
Yet, because of the rotation some good things happened to Sabah like stopping this project and deporting hundreds of thousands of illegals until then President Glorio Macapagal cried that her government could not cope with the arrivals.
Both when a new person occupied the CM’s chair, this time a Chinaman who also knew more about tourism than anyone else – Tan Sri Chong Kah Kiat.
It was he who convinced Dr Mahathir to open up Sabah’s skies to direct international flights when he was Minsiter in the Prime Minister’s Department that today is pouring in billions of ringgit as international tourists no longer need to fly to Kuala Lumpur and take another flight – which had to be MAS – in order to enjoy Sabah’s treasures.
Because of Chong, for the first time tourist dollars went directly into the pockets of industry players and indirectly to taxi drivers, seafood suppliers and everyone along the supply chain. No wonder Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew described tourists as a nation’s best investors.
I suspect Chong also knew that whatever decision he makes as CM would get Dr Mahathir’s support even though the low-cost flats decision was made by Dr Mahathir’s own peninsula-based party’s Sabah operatives as their final act before passing the baton to Chong.
Chong held an urgent State Cabinet meeting the same morning that our report appeared and decided that the project must be stopped. I didn’t know the impact our report had until much later when Chong said, “Brother, what made you carry that report on the front page. It is because of the Daily Express report, that I called for an urgent Cabinet meeting and made a decision.
“Suddenly, some of my ministers who previously said there was no other place to put these squatters agreed there was still land available in Kapayan.”
The cancellation of the federal-funded project did not go down well with the political party that had hoped to wrest the constituency from PBS, whose readmission after a decade in the wilderness into Barisan Nasional around 2000 was also due to Chong whispering to the “old man” that it was in Sabah’s best political interests to reconcile with Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan and let bygones be bygones.
Just when I thought the matter had ended, a Munafik (hypocrite) issued me a letter stating that the project had already been decided and demanded to know why Daily Express jeopardised it. He was a Member of Parliament whose firm was among the consultants for the low-cost homes to be built. Why he did not sue me or the paper if he thought he had a good case for compensation beats me. He probably hoped to benefit millions from the project and wanted to air his frustration. I ignored the letter.
That was not all.
Around 2005 – five years after the rotation was scrapped – new Prime Minister late Tun Abdullah Badawi invited Chief Editors for lunch at Hyatt. After the event, I was ambushed and scolded by one aspiring politician who accused the Daily Express of preventing the poor from enjoying the beach with the project’s cancellation.
“Do you think only you people but not our poor deserve to stay there?” he asked.
Maybe it did not matter to him that the “poor” he was referring to were not poor Sabah natives from the interior but those of foreign origin being relocated from elsewhere.
I later learnt that he was aspiring for his party’s Tanjung Aru division head post, which would make him the likely candidate for the seat when elections are called.
He was not the only person eyeing the post for the same reason. Another who originated from southern Philippines and caused ripples later on when he declared interest to contest the post was pressured by the party to drop the idea.
This was because of his controversial background (he even claimed he was one of the Sulu claimants) as his name was among linked to the so-called “Project IC”. Which only confirmed as to the identity of the eventual dwellers.
Chong’s plan was for a mixed development project at the site. But as fate would have it, it was no more on the drawing board by the time his two-year term was up and it was the turn of Musa, the present Governor, in Kuala Lumpur’s game of musical chairs.
Musa on assuming the CMship decided the place should be a gift to the people of Sabah, where families could go for recreation and exercise. He wanted Kota Kinabalu to be a world class city and worked out a deal with Datuk Victor Paul to develop it into Perdana Park costing RM50 million in exchange for Timmatch being reimbursed arrears running into millions of ringgit.
This made everyone happy and soon the place began to be frequented in the thousands by people eager to stay fit or simply hang out and be thrilled to fountains on the lake that danced to music at night. Musa deserves applause for his vision. He told me that so many were eyeing the place but felt it should be gifted to the people of Sabah.
Which I found to be true.
The late Tan Sri Ting Peck King, who undertook the Tg Aru flyover and KKIA Terminal 2 project, said to me that he was also hoping to put up a resort there. That he even tried to “win over” certain high ranking people in the State Finance Ministry to support his proposal but that “they all said they were afraid of Musa”.
There is also the story to be told about the State Library that today is sharing part of the property. It was not in the original plan. That is also a credit to Musa because he was concerned that there were seven schools in the vicinity, excluding Sanzac in nearby Sembulan, with many bumiputra students who had nowhere to go for a library.
He realised that most of the bumiputra parents were B40 and didn’t own cars like the rich parents who could drop off their kids at the main library in Luyang. Besides, having a library meant parents could ask their kids to proceed to proceed there and wait until they were picked up.
Fast forward to May 2026, the jogging park that helped thousands stay fit remains closed. All because a dozen otters invaded it in 2024. They must be KK’s dirty dozen to strike fear in the joggers and take over the park. Undeniably, one or two joggers were bitten.
City Hall under whose jurisdiction the facility comes under promised to reopen it last September. Its been eight months now and the fact that it remains off limits shows that all it takes is a dozen otters to hold the people of Kota Kinabalu to ransom.
This is unacceptable when there are so many pest control firms around and certainly a blow to the vision and noble intention of the now Governor.
Must it take a phone call from the Istana to the Mayor to find out what is going on? This should not be how things in Sabah work.
The views expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Express. If you have something to share, write to us at: Forum@dailyexpress.com.my
