COMMENT | Sanusi Junid, who died yesterday after being seen as seemingly healthy at the last public occasion he attended which was on the night before, was a knowledgeable man, notes Muhyiddin Yassin in an encomium to the former Kedah menteri besar.

That may be the most accurate thing said about Sanusi among the plethora of compliments friends and acquaintances piled on the former minister and Umno secretary-general.

Speaking well of the just-deceased is obligatory. But saying something that resonates with what is generally known of the person that manages to be both accurate and complimentary is harder to bring off.

Sanusi was a loyal lieutenant, one who was content with being just that - a hewer of wood and drawer of water - but able to bring a certain wit to that mundane role, which as uncommon among people of his disposition.

Sanusi was a loyal lieutenant, mainly to Dr Mahathir Mohamad, just as Salleh Said Keruak presently is to Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The difference between both, in the role that subalterns revel in, is in the ability to offer servility with style. Well, if you going to apple polish, might as well do it with aplomb.

Sanusi's loyal lieutenancy to Mahathir, the leader who he served the longest in a long career in the penultimate echelons of Umno, was service of a certain witty class.

Consider what he said about Anwar Ibrahim when the just-sacked deputy prime minister drew big crowds at the National Mosque and at Kota Semarang in Kedah in the immediate aftermath of his expulsion from government and Umno:

“He is a snake charmer summoning spirits from the deep. But will they...