WHEN Dominique Ng woke up this morning, the things that filled his head as he lazed in bed was of the nine years he had fought for the recognition of Malaysia Day.

September 16 has always been a nostalgic day, he told The Malaysian Insight.

“Indeed (it has always been),” the state rights campaigner and former PKR assemblyman said, recalling the years when he and a handful of like-minded friends were harassed by the authorities when they staged a flag-raising ceremony at the then Central Padang in Kuching to commemorate the day Malaysia came into being.

“Lots of reminiscences,” he said.

But Ng has been marking the day, in his own unique way, since 2014.

Today, he took advantage of the public holiday to take his family out for breakfast.

“After going through my diary and records of my Malaysia Day flag raising episodes and reminiscences – there are a lot, more or less one for every year from 2005 – I feel I cannot do any better than the Malaysia Day of 2014.

“As such it will suffice for this year,” he said, adding that he would rather spend time with his family rather join fellow rights activists in an alternative Malaysia Day commemoration in Bau.

The official commemoration, the 57th, is being held in Sibu town.

Ng said he is also keeping a promise he had made to himself that he will stop his annual flag raising ceremony when the government officially recognised the day.

“My self-appointed task… is accomplished.”

The last time Ng raised the Jalur Gemilang was on the 50th anniversary, the golden jubilee, of Malaysia Day in 2013.

While he raised the flag at the waterfront with his daughter beside him, some 20,000 people thronged the Central Padang – which was renamed Padang Merdeka on the same day – less than a kilometre away for the first official Malaya Day.

The very first flag raising in 2005 was, however, still strong in his memory.

He still remembered the police coming to harass “me and my small group of just a dozen of diehards” that day.

“It was not difficult for them to know or see my action, as the central police station is perched right at the top right hand corner of the Central Padang.”

Ng said a contingent of the Federal Reserve Unit (FRU), under the command of an ASP Morshidi, “came to confront me at the ceremony”

“He asked me if I have any police permit otherwise I would be holding an illegal assembly. I said ‘No’.

“I don’t think that there was any such permission granted or needed when 6,000 Sarawakians, who were about to become Malaysians, held the same flag raising ceremony there on September 16, 1963,” he said.

Ng said Morshidi hesitated and later told him, since “there are only a few of you here, I would not arrest you, but if there are more, I would have to act’.”

“To which I immediately rebutted: ‘I hope one day that there will be 6,000 people (the number that had witnessed this event at the padang in 1963) raising the Malaysian flag with me on September 16’.”

At that first commemoration, Ng said the reading of the Malaysia and Sarawak proclamations were re-enacted

Wan Zainal Wan Sausi, the then chairman of PKR Sarawak, had the honour of being Tunku Abdul Rahman to read out the Malaysia Proclamation

He said he assumed the role of the state’s first chief minister Stephen Kalong Ningkan to read out the Sarawak proclamation.

“And we all sang the Negaraku with much gusto while the Malaysian and Sarawakian flags were raised.

“Against all odds, it was done. The banner that we unfurled on that day read: “16 Sept is our True National Day.”

Ng said despite harassment from the police and local authorities, he and his friends continued the flag raising on that date every year until 2013. – September 16, 2020.