Kota Kinabalu: Daily Express Chief Editor James Sarda, who was conferred the PGDK that carries the title “Datuk” on the occasion of the 69th birthday of Head of State Tun Juhar Mahiruddin on Saturday, is also a Justice of the Peace (JP) and was conferred the ASDK for his contributions.
He had on a previous occasion politely declined the datukship on grounds that there are others who are more deserving.
James who served in the now defunct National Echo and the Star before joining the Daily Express, is a Chevening Scholar and holds a Masters in Journalism from Cardiff University, UK.
He won the Malaysian Environmental Journalism award (ICI-CCM print media in 1996) for his reports on the conditions of Sabah’s rivers.
He won the Malaysian Journalism award (MPI-print media reporting) in 2000 for exposing the serious Syabu situation in Sabah that was introduced by Filipino migrants and was making inroads into the peninsula to displace heroin.
He won the Malaysian Investigative Journalism award (MPI-print media) in 2022 for revisiting the June 6, 1976 Nomad air crash that claimed the lives of 11 people, including Chief Minister Tun Fuad Stephens and four of his Ministers.
It also involved doing a documentary titled “Double Six: The Untold Stories” that has generated rave reviews on You-tube. It was produced by Dexter Yeh with James working on the script.
This makes him the only journalist to win three of the most coveted awards at national level by the Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) as well as dabble into film scriptwriting.
In fact, two of his story ideas for movies was lodged with the Hollywood Writers Guild in 2002 by renowned creator of Aristocats, Tom Rowe, who was also behind Fantasy Island.
At State level, James consistently won Golds and Silvers at the Kinabalu Shell awards.
He was among 14 journalists worldwide to be awarded the US-based Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship in 1993 to experience six months in an American newsroom with the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. He did some 40 reports for the Observer, including front page ones, that the paper included him in the select team to cover the first official visit of then US President Bill Clinton to North Carolina.
His investigative reporting for Daily Express in 1995 with crime reporter Clifford Santa Maria helped to expose the whereabouts of Nick Leeson, who caused the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995.
Leeson hid in Sabah for about a week while the world was looking for him. The Daily Express became world famous following his arrest, which Interpol relied on when the RBA flight that originated in Kota Kinabalu transited in Frankfurt.
The Times of London and The Independent both hailed the Daily Express report as a World Scoop – the only such to be achieved by any Malaysian newspaper.
In 2007, he was among 148 professionals from throughout the Commonwealth selected to participate in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Tour of India where he was assigned to study and report on the progress of medical tourism in Kerala since India’s independence.
The patron of the CST was the late Prince Philip, husband of the late Queen Elizabeth 2, who was represented at the event by Princess Anne (pic). James has also covered Commonwealth Parliamentary Conferences in Cameroon and South Africa.
At home, he has presented working papers in seminars hosted by the Asian Institute of Development Communication and Institute of Development Studies (Sabah). In his paper on Good Governance at an IDS seminar in 1998, he called for longer State Assembly debates for improved accountability by the Executive branch instead of bulldozing Bills late into the night, which the State Government praised as a worthy suggestion from the media.
His work has also been published in the Sabah Museum Journal.
In the course of his work, James uncovered several key historical facts about Sabah that were not known and could have gone unnoticed if not for his research and reports. These include: The visits by pioneer silent movie era Hollywood filmmakers Martin and Osa Johnson, in 1920 and 1935. He confirmed with the US-based Safari Museum in Kansas that the couple’s “Jungle Adventure” shot in the Kinabatangan in 1920 was the world’s very first wildlife documentary. Which gives Sabah, in particular, and Malaysia an unrivalled edge in ecotourism as those about Africa, also made by the Johnsons, were done after leaving Borneo.
James helped to connect the Johnsons’ Safari Museum in Kansas with the Sabah Museum which led to nearly 3,000 rare images of wildlife and tribals in Sabah taken by the Johnsons being gifted to Sabah Museum.
In appreciation, James was also presented with the pictures which he turned into a now sought-after coffee table book together with historian Datuk Dr Danny Wong, “Spirit of Borneo” that was presented to visiting VVIPs by the State Government. In 2002, he was involved in the restoration of the Agnes Keith house in Sandakan, whose globally-acclaimed book “Land Below The Wind” gave Sabah its famous nickname, during the course of which he traced the whereabouts of an orphan that the Keiths raised briefly and she wrote about in a chapter called “Little Boy”.
The pre-war recollection of the house by the orphan, Jusit Rantai who was by then in his 70s, was instrumental in ensuring it was close as possible to the original. It also emerged that Jusit joined the police after the war and was the one who raised the Malaysia flag for the first time at the proclamation of independence through Malaysia on 16.9.1963. James was also the last person to interview Stephen Holley, one of the Malaysia Agreement signatories, Undersecretary to the Governor before Sabah’s independence and briefly for eight months, independent Sabah’s first State Secretary.
One of the important outcomes was the revelation that the former Lands and Survey office beside the Hongkong Bank in the city centre (pic) occupied a hugely important place in Malaysian, British and Commonwealth history.
For on the upstairs of the then two-storey wooden building on 15.2.1947 the territory of British North Borneo was transferred by the British North Borneo Chartered Company (BNBCC) to the Crown.
This made Sabah the final colony ever of the once mighty British Empire. India became the first to obtain independence exactly six months later.
The building where this happened was built in 1910 and served as the headquarters of the BNBCC, before becoming the Lands and Surveys office. It was destroyed in a fire around 2000. Only several pillars of the original structure remain today. The British Military Administration used the premises to store surrendered Japanese weapons after the war.
Holley explained this and more in the book, “White Headhunter in Borneo” shortly before his death in 2005, upon the urging of James, who helped to edit it.
The paper also managed to convince the State Government through the Forestry Department during the tenure of Tan Sri Musa Aman to identify and demarcate the exact Death March route from Sandakan to Ranau where some 2,500 Australian and British troops were forced to march to their deaths.
His research on Saudin bin Labutau (pic) from Kg Ambual in Keningau who was the first person from this part of the world to travel to New York in the 1930s became the basis for a documentary to be officially launched on Oct. 28, this year.
Under James, the Daily Express with passionate and able senior reporters like Kan Yaw Chong and Mary Chin, also played an instrumental role in getting several State Government decisions/proposals reversed on grounds of public interest.
These include: Reversing the decision of a rotated Chief Minister to build 5,000 units of low-cost flats at Hone Place in Tg Aru to accommodate squatters. It was suspected that many of these squatters were “Projek IC” holders. Incoming CM Tan Sri Chong Kah Kiat, responding to the front page report, immediately ordered a halt to the project, agreeing that it was incompatible with Tg Aru’s high tourism value and would destroy the prospects of the nearby Shangrila Tg Aru Beach Resort.
His successor Tan Sri Musa later decided that the 15 acres should rightfully be returned to the people of Sabah in the form of a park, making Perdana Park one of the most popular recreation spots today. Reversing the State Government’s decision to drag the rotting carcass of a rare massive Bryde’s Whale that beached at Pulau Gaya. Following a front page plea that the skeletal remains would serve the interests of students, it was towed back from sea and experts were assigned to prepare it for display at the Sabah Museum. Today, it is one of the museum’s top attractions. Reversing the State Government’s decision to resettle squatters to Kg Maang in Penampang, mostly migrants with documents, to make way for the redevelopment of the Kota Kinabalu International Airport. Reversing the State Government’s decision to build a RM730m highway and bridge deep in the Kinabatangan that would have destroyed the ecotourism goldmine of what was described by environmental icon Sir David Attenborough as one of the world’s last remaining biodiversity spots. The project was approved by former PM Najib Razak without going through the Federal and State cabinets nor being included in the Malaysia Plans. The effort won for the Daily Express the Prime Minister’s or Hibiscus award. The only Malaysian newspaper to date to win the award.
James was also entrusted by pioneer journalist Datuk Mohd Fauzi Patel and former Chief Minister Tan Sri Peter Lo, both of who had passed on, to publish their memoirs. He is currently working on them.
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