Saudara Zul died yesterday – he never gave up his struggle

COMMENT | The news hit with a Facebook posting from Siti Nor Hamid Tuah, herself the daughter of legendary defender of peasants rights Hamid Tuah.

She said that our friend Saudara Zulkarnain Abdullah had passed away peacefully yesterday morning. He would have turned 63 later this year.

I was stunned and upset. I still am.

I first met Saudara Zul in May, 1995. GE9 had just finished, and BN led by Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim had scored a massive win.

The opposition was in hopeless disarray - Razaleigh Hamzah’s Semangat 46 had no semangat at all, and soon folded back into Umno.

I was, however, disgusted by BN’s arrogance and, through the marvels of this enormous thick device known as the phone book, decided to call the home of one of the defeated Parti Rakyat Malaysia candidates, professor Sanusi Osman.

He gave me the address of PRM and I took two minibuses from Ampang into the heart of Setapak and knocked on the door of a building that had seen better days. There, manning the counter, was Zul. I was later to find that he lived and worked at the party HQ...