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Monday, 02-Sep-2002 9:35 AM REFORMASI and the Royal Family (Part 4) Fact number
one - the Selangor Royal Family is probably the largest Royal Family
in Fact number two – more than half the members of the Selangor Royal Family are Reformasi minded. While only two may be publicly known – Raja Kamaruddin Raja Wahid a.k.a. Raja Komando plus I – there are thousands of silent supporters plus many more who are involved at opposition party branch levels or just attend gatherings and rallies as “observers”. His Royal Highness the Sultan of Selangor once told me, if I gathered all our family members and registered them as voters in one particular constituency, I would obtain enough votes to win the seat hands down. Fact number three - the Selangor Sultanate has the most colourful history whose roots can be traced back to the Bugis Empire. For the uninitiated, the Bugis are a seafaring race that made its living plundering ships that plied the Straits of Melaka. They were fierce warriors, feared by friends and foe alike. But the Bugis
were too smart to do the dirty work. They allowed the Dutch to attack
the British ships that passed through the Straits carrying opium
between The Bugis
did not retreat though. Armed with mere keris
(the curved Malay dagger that is now UMNO’s symbol), the Bugis
faced the Dutch cannons until all their forces were wiped out. The
famous Bugis leader and warrior, Raja Haji, was killed in the battle.
The Dutch placed Raja Haji’s body on one
of their warships called the Dolphijt
and, at Thereafter, the Dutch, out of respect for Raja Haji, named him “Raja Api”, the “Fire Prince”. And no one tangled with the Bugis anymore after that. Such was the
Bugis’ reputation that the very mention
of their name drove fear into the hearts of lesser mortals. Till
today, Bugis traders still ply the seas
off Therefore,
if you see someone walking around I was told
that the seas off And, the Selangor Royal Family can trace its roots to these feared Bugis. Selangor did not officially come into being until 1766 when Raja Lumu, a Bugis Prince, was installed as the First Sultan of Selangor and took the name of Sultan Salehuddin Shah. Prior to this, Selangor was “untamed territory”, and had been since the days of the Melaka Sultanate. Districts such as Kelang, Jeram, Langat and Kuala Selangor are mentioned in the Malay Annals as “paying homage” to the Melaka Sultan. In short, Selangor was a “colony” of Melaka. During the reign of Sultan Muzaffar Shah of Melaka from 1445 to 1459, Tun Perak, son of the Bendahara of Melaka – equivalent to a present day Chief Minister – was appointed the Penghulu of Kelang. I suppose this would be equivalent to a State Assemblyman today. When Melaka
was invaded by the Siamese army – today called When Sultan
Muzaffar Shah died in 1459, Sultan Mansur Shah was installed the new Sultan and he ruled until
1477. During his reign, his son, Paduka Seri Sultan Mahmud Shah was the last Sultan of Melaka for, in 1511, the Portuguese invaded Melaka and drove the Sultan out. Sultan Mahmud escaped to Johor and, thereafter, the sovereignty of Selangor was transferred to the Johor Sultan. Therefore, for 300 years from the 15th to 18th Century, Selangor was under the Melaka and Johor Sultanates. The Bugis first made their presence felt in Selangor around the 17th Century. Selangor was then rapidly emerging as an important trading center and the Bugis migrated to Selangor in hordes. Johor, then, was a great empire – the Johor-Riau Empire – under Raja Kechil Siak. In 1722, Raja Kechil Siak was defeated by the famous Five Bugis Brothers and sovereignty of the Johor-Riau Empire was transferred to Sultan Sulaiman Badrul Alam Shah. The Five Bugis Brothers – Daing Perani, Daing Menambun, Daing Merewah, Daing Chelak, and Daing Perani – were the sons of Daing Rilaka, the ruler of Riau (Tanah Bugis). But the five brothers were banished from their homeland for killing the son of one of the Chieftains in a quarrel over a woman. Having nowhere to go, they came to Selangor which was not only untamed territory but had a large Bugis population. And it was Daing Chelak’s son, Raja Lumu, who eventually became the First Sultan of Selangor. The Five Bugis
Brothers were later all killed in various parts of The Bugis never refuse a good fight and would join a fight just for the sake of fighting - and try to find out later what the fight was all about. A bit like the Old Wild West don’t you think? And, if the fight was against an oppressive and corrupt ruler, even better, for the Bugis are anti-establishment and non-conformists. Taking into consideration the Selangor Royal Family’s roots, ever wonder it is Reformasi-minded? And this is what Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is up against when he takes on the Selangor Royal Family. (To be continued) RAJA 21 Aug - REFORMASI and the Royal Family (Part 1) 22 Aug - REFORMASI and the Royal Family (Part 2) 26 Aug - REFORMASI and the Royal Family (Part 3) |
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