Turning point: Hee Leong (right) and Hee Keat looking at their father’s general election poster in 1974.
The life story of Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik as told to journalist Foong Pek Yee shortly after his retirement from active politics in 2003.
Dr Ling was the fourth generation of the Ling family, with a history dated back to Sitiawan, Perak in then Malaya in 1903.
A medical doctor by training, he went on to become the longest serving Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) president and the longest serving Transport Minister (1986-2003) in Malaysian history.
By Foong Pek Yee
foongpekyee@gmail.com
Sept 18, 2026.
My eldest son Hee Leong was born on May 12, 1969 – the eve of the May 13 racial riots, often referred to as 513.
“There was a curfew and I had to get a special permit to bring my wife and baby home.”
On the political front, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) which is a component party of the ruling coalition called the Alliance ( officially renamed to Barisan National in 1974) lost all the seats it contested in Penang in the just concluded 1969 general elections.
MCA splinter party called Gerakan , then an opposition party, made a clean sweep in the state.
Thus the MCA top leaders saw an urgent need to recruit members to strengthen the party.
The then Butterworth MCA division chairman Lim Ean Cheng persuaded me to join the party.
I joined MCA in 1971.
The division chairman appointed me as state secretary and introduced me to Lee San Choon when he visited Penang.
“Lim Ean Cheng also recommended me to San Choon to make me a central committee member (the MCA central committee is the party’s highest decision making body).”
I remember taking a flight to Kuala Lumpur to meet then MCA president Tun Tan Siew Sin.
“Three years later I contested and won the Mata Kuching parliamentary seat in the 1974 general election, and retained the seat in the next two general elections.”
In 1976, I was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government and Federal Territory Ministry.
By then, I was a father of two and having my own clinic.
My wife had quit her nursing job to help me in the clinic and take care of our children, Hee Leong and Hee Keat.
Comfortable life: Dr Ling’s clinic in Butterworth.
The clinic was on the ground floor and we stayed upstairs.
While the status quo was comfortable for our family, I decided to go full time politics in 1976.
It was not an easy decision.
“The clinic meant a lot to me.
“I bought it for RM50,000 including the building.
“Mother sold her bungalow and loaned me Rm15,000 and I took a bank loan to pay the balance.”
The clinic belonged to a Canadian doctor who studied in Sheffield, England.
He married a Malaysian Chinese girl and the couple decided to sell the clinic and leave Malaysia.
The clinic was the panel doctor for Penang Port Commission workers and Penang Labour Board workers and business was very good.
“The two contracts alone would give me a minimum of RM1,000 income a month, and this was really big money then.
“And the thousands of workers and their family members were also my voters.”
Dr Sak Cheng Lum, who is a close friend of mine and two years my Junior in University of Singapore took over the clinic.
The year 1978 was a difficult year for our family.
We lost our mother to cancer.
“While I retained the Mata Kuching parliamentary seat in the 1978 general election, my mother’s funeral was three days before polling day.”
Despite battling the disease for more than a year, she managed to make preparations for her funeral.
“Strong, honest and meticulous, mother was a very good Christian and had lived a simple and good life.”
Photos: Credit to a publication titled A Tribute to…Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik from his colleagues and friends in the Alumni Association of the King Edward VII College of Medicine and the Faculties of Medicine of the University of Malaya and University of Singapore.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication titled The life story of Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission from the journalist Foong Pek Yee.
