The sad and shocking news of the death of the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and the MP for Tanjong Piai, Mohamed Farid Md Rafik, came to me while DAP MP for Kepong Lim Lip Eng and I were visiting a long-house in Kapit, away from any telephonic access.

Mohamad’s sudden death is a promising political future cut short by heart attack, and I convey the deepest condolences to his bereaved family. The passing of Farid is a great loss to his family, Johor state and the nation.

Pondering on the unkind twist of fate, the poem by H.W. Longfellow which I had learnt in school in the fifties came back to me:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!
Heart within and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

RIP Farid.

(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Sibu on Sunday, 22nd September 2019)