Aussie Chris Carney has been a lecturer of sculpture at the Institut Teknologi Mara in Shah Alam for a year when Tugu Negara was bombed, on Aug 27 1975.

It came soon after a senior Government official declared the end of the Communist threat.

Chris thought that this was somewhat ominous.

Soon, some 23 explosive charges were strapped onto the statues.

The main intent was to obliterate the most prominent “warrior” foisting the Malaysian flag.

That didn’t materialise but one of the statues tumbled. The rest hanging on precariously. The damage was extensive. Shards of bronze sprawled on the floor.

The bombing punctured up little holes all over. Major components went missing. Broken leg. A knee had to be reconstructed. Also, a missing leg. Beheading sounds altogether crass. This was inflicted on one of the statues. Collectively, the damages were devastating.

Chris was not going to roll over. He engineered a move. “I have the necessary skills,” he told ApaKhabar in an interview a day before the Tugu Negara Restoration Team met the Press on Tuesday. Sculpture was his core course at the South Australian School of Art before arriving in Malaysia in 1974. A glimpse into his DNA is in order. In his five-year tenure at the ITM he also built a ship and sailed to Singapore, then on navigated his ship from Port Klang to Penang.

Now back to Tugu Negara.

Chris learned of a committee formed to plan and oversee the rehabilitation of the Tugu Negara. “The panel would be meeting this particular day, at 2pm.” The young lecturer crafted a letter to the then Malaysian Prime Minister and delivered it personally to the PMO by noon.

He told a PMO staffer that the PM ought to be reading the note.

“I drove back to Shah Alam ..soon the phone rang ..it was the director of ITM.”

Chris was summoned, promptly. The director let it be known that a lecturer writing to PM without the expressed knowledge and permission of the Institute was improper.

Still, the director acknowledged that this was a good idea.”Yes he did chastise me”.

The Silent Strategist

Chris stirred into action. There wasn’t really a bidding exercise. But the ITM team must convince this Committee that was chaired by, interestingly, the Menteri Besar of Perak Kamaruddin Mohamed Isa.

Certain theories were not probed and authenticated then. The priority was to secure the vicinity of the Tugu and rehabilitate a damaged national pride. There was this talk that Kamaruddin Mohamed Isa was among those who posed for their images to be recorded when the Tugu was built. Not sufficiently Malay looking? Will the ethnicity of a statue show up?

The cheekbone is deemed to be a telltale feature of ethnicity. Never mind that. The task then was to restore the Tugu, not tamper with facades and looks.

Chris stayed at the Istana Kecil in Klang. His first recruit was Abdul Mansor Ibrahim who remains “Chot” to his friends. This reporter first spoke to him in a video call. “I was Chot to my Utara friends at ITM….I am from Hulu Langat.” He seems receptive to this branding and was suitably excited about the Tugu job.

The bombing came after he had graduated from ITM. He studied fine arts. He was renting a place at Eng Ann Garden, Klang with ITM lecturer Kok Yew Puah and a friend, Ponirin Amin.

Part 2:grog, ingot, epoxy mortar, bronze from London, ITM shutdown and Terengganu dexterity