The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (3 page)

Acknowledgements

I was fortunate in 1995 to gather a team of young researchers. Andrew Tan Kok Kiong, seconded to SPH from the Singapore Administrative Service, was helped by Pang Gek Choo, who worked for the
Straits Times
, and Alan Chong. They made a thorough search of government archives and ferreted out my correspondence, minutes of important meetings and other relevant documents. Andrew Tan was my most valuable aide; able and resourceful, he coordinated the work of the researchers, organised the material, and made my task easier. Pang Gek Choo was quick and efficient in tracing reports of events and speeches in Straits Times’ archives of the last 40 years. After two years, as the work expanded, Walter Fernandez and Yvonne Lim from SPH and Dr Goh Ai Ting from the National University of Singapore (NUS) joined my researchers.

They had help from officers like Panneer Selvan of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The registry officer in the Prime Minister’s Office, Florence Ler Chay Keng, and her assistants, Wendy Teo Kwee Geok and Vaijayanthimala, were amazingly successful in locating my letters and notes as far back as the 1960s.

Lily Tan, director of the National Archives, helped my researchers in their requests for documents and oral history transcripts of those persons who had given me permission to read them. The staff at the NUS library, the National Library and the Straits Times editorial library were equally helpful.

The prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, allowed me access to all records and documents in the government ministries and in the archives.

The British Public Record Office in Kew, Richmond yielded Colonial Office and Commonwealth Office documents which gave interesting insights from a British perspective on events from 1955 to 1965.

Dennis Bloodworth, an old friend, once foreign correspondent for the
London Observer
newspaper, went through my drafts. He was thorough in deleting repetitions and suggesting alternatives to my overworked favourite expressions. However, Bloodworth left me to decide what went into my book.

A younger generation of editorial writers and journalists – from the
Straits Times
, Cheong Yip Seng (editor in chief), Han Fook Kwang (political editor), Warren Fernandez, Sumiko Tan and Zuraidah Ibrahim; from the
New Paper
, Irene Ng; from the
Zaobao
, Lim Jim Koon (editor) and Seng Han Thong – read my drafts. They suggested many improvements so that those not yet born when the events I described happened could understand the background against which they took place. Han Fook Kwang and Warren Fernandez improved the flow of my narrative. Shova Loh, line editor in Times Editions, meticulously tightened my sentences and removed errors.

To avoid being unwittingly insensitive on Malay issues, I had all my draft chapters relating to Malays read by Guntor Sadali (editor of
Berita Harian
), People’s Action Party MPs Yaacob Ibrahim, Mohamad Maidin and Zainul Abidin Rasheed, and minister for community development, Abdullah Tarmugi. I did not want to hurt Malay feelings and have tried not to do so.

Old colleagues, including Goh Keng Swee, Lim Kim San, Ong Pang Boon, Othman Wok, Lee Khoon Choy, Rahim Ishak, Maurice Baker, Sim Kee Boon, S.R. Nathan and Ngiam Tong Dow, read the relevant parts of my drafts and helped to confirm or correct my recollection of events.

Tommy Koh, ambassador-at-large, Chan Heng Chee, ambassador to Washington, Kishore Mahbubani, permanent secretary (policy), ministry
of foreign affairs, and Bilahari Kausikan, deputy secretary, ministry of foreign affairs, read the page proofs and made many useful suggestions.

I am grateful to them and to the many others who gave freely of their time and advice from which I have benefited. But the responsibility for the final result with all its shortcomings is mine alone.

I had visitors and other duties to attend to during the day. I did most of my uninterrupted work on the PC at night after the day’s work was done. Several of the young men and women to whom I sent my drafts asked if the time-stamp on my PC was wrong, because they were frequently stamped as 3 or 4 am. I assured them that it was correct.

My long-time personal assistants, Cheong Cheng Hoon and Wong Lin Hoe, had the hard work of typing and retyping my drafts. They helped me out when I ran into problems with my PC. Cheong retired when the book was three-quarters done, and two others, Loh Hock Teck and Koh Kiang Chay, took over. All had to adjust to my difficult hours requiring them to work well past dinner-time.

I am indebted and grateful to all of them.

1. Suddenly, Independence

It was like any other Monday morning in Singapore until the music stopped. At 10 am, the pop tunes on the radio were cut off abruptly. Stunned listeners heard the announcer solemnly read out a proclamation – 90 words that changed the lives of the people of Singapore and Malaysia:

“Whereas it is the inalienable right of a people to be free and independent, I, Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore, do hereby proclaim and declare on behalf of the people and the government of Singapore that as from today, the ninth day of August in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five, Singapore shall be forever a sovereign, democratic and independent nation, founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of her people in a more just and equal society.”

Two hundred and fifty miles to the north, in peninsular Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman was making his own proclamation, declaring that “Singapore shall cease to be a state of Malaysia and shall forever be an independent and sovereign state and nation separate from and independent of Malaysia, and that the government of Malaysia recognises the government of Singapore as an independent and sovereign government of Singapore and will always work in friendship and cooperation with it.”

Separation! What I had fought so hard to achieve was now being dissolved. Why? And why so suddenly? It was only two years since the island of Singapore had become part of the new Federation of Malaysia (which also included the North Borneo territories of Sarawak and Sabah).

At 10 am the same day, in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, the Tunku explained to parliament:

“In the end we find that there are only two courses open to us: to take repressive measures against the Singapore government or their leaders for the behaviour of some of their leaders, and the course of action we are taking now, to sever with the state government of Singapore that has ceased to give a measure of loyalty to the central government.”

The House listened in utter silence. The Tunku was speaking at the first reading of a resolution moved by Tun Abdul Razak, the deputy prime minister, to pass the Constitution of Malaysia (Singapore Amendment) Bill, 1965, immediately. By 1:30 pm, the debate on the second and third readings had ended, and the bill was sent to the senate. The senate started its first reading at 2:30 and completed the third reading by 4:30. The head of state, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, gave his royal assent that same day, concluding the constitutional formalities. Singapore was cast out.

Under Malay-Muslim custom, a husband, but not the wife, can declare
“Talak”
(I divorce thee) and the woman is divorced. They can reconcile and he can remarry her, but not after he has said
“Talak”
three times. The three readings in the two chambers of parliament were the three
talaks
with which Malaysia divorced Singapore. The partners – predominantly Malay in Malaya, predominantly Chinese in Singapore – had not been compatible. Their union had been marred by increasing conjugal strife over whether the new Federation should be a truly multiracial society, or one dominated by the Malays.

Singapore went for the substance of the divorce, not its legal formalities. If there was to be separation, I wanted to ensure that the terms were practical, workable and final. To make certain there could be no doubt as to their finality, the Singapore government published the two proclamations in a special government gazette that morning. I had
asked for – and the Tunku had given – his proclamation with his personal signature so that there could be no reversal, even if other Malaysian leaders or members of parliament disagreed with it. P.S. Raman, director of Radio & Television Singapore, had received these documents from the secretary of the Cabinet Office. He decided to have them read in full, in Malay, Mandarin and English, on the three different language channels and repeated every half hour. Within minutes, the news agencies had cabled the news to the world.

I had started the day, Monday, 9 August, with a series of meetings with key civil servants, especially those under federal jurisdiction, to inform them that Singapore ministers would now assume control. Just before 10 o’clock, when the announcement was to be made, I met those members of the diplomatic corps in Singapore who could be gathered at short notice. I told them of the separation and Singapore’s independence, and requested recognition from their governments.

As the diplomats left, I drew aside the Indian deputy high commissioner and the UAR (Egyptian) consul-general and gave them letters for Prime Minister Shastri and President Nasser. India and Egypt were then, with Indonesia, the leading countries in the Afro-Asian movement. In my letters, I sought their recognition and support. From India, I asked for advisers to train an army, and from Egypt, an adviser to build a coastal defence force.

Before noon, I arrived at the studios of Radio & Television Singapore for a press conference. It had an unintended and unexpected result. After a few opening questions and answers, a journalist asked, “Could you outline for us the train of events that led to this morning’s proclamation?”

I recounted my meetings with the Tunku in Kuala Lumpur during the previous two days:

“But the Tunku put it very simply that there was no way, and that there would be a great deal of trouble if we insisted on going on. And I would like to add … You see, this is a moment of … every
time we look back on this moment when we signed this agreement, which severed Singapore from Malaysia, it will be a moment of anguish because all my life I have believed in merger and the unity of these two territories. It’s a people connected by geography, economics, and ties of kinship … Would you mind if we stop for a while?”

At that moment, my emotions overwhelmed me. It was only after another 20 minutes that I was able to regain my composure and resume the press conference.

It was not a live telecast, as television transmissions then started only at 6 pm. I asked P.S. Raman to cut the footage of my breakdown. He strongly advised against it. The press, he said, was bound to report it, and if he edited it out, their descriptions of the scene would make it appear worse. I had found Raman, a Tamil Brahmin born in Madras and a loyal Singaporean, a shrewd and sound adviser. I took his advice. And so, many people in Singapore and abroad saw me lose control of my emotions. That evening, Radio & Television Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur telecast my press conference, including this episode. Among Chinese, it is unbecoming to exhibit such a lack of manliness. But I could not help myself. It was some consolation that many viewers in Britain, Australia and New Zealand sympathised with me and with Singapore. They were interested in Malaysia because their troops were defending it against armed “Confrontation”, the euphemism President Sukarno of Indonesia used to describe his small-scale undeclared war against the new and expanded “neo-colonialist” Federation.

I was emotionally overstretched, having gone through three days and nights of a wrenching experience. With little sleep since Friday night in Kuala Lumpur, I was close to physical exhaustion. I was weighed down by a heavy sense of guilt. I felt I had let down several million people in Malaysia: immigrant Chinese and Indians, Eurasians, and even some Malays. I had aroused their hopes, and they had joined people in
Singapore in resisting Malay hegemony, the root cause of our dispute. I was ashamed that I had left our allies and supporters to fend for themselves, including party leaders from other states of Malaysia – Sabah, Sarawak, Penang, Perak, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. Together we had formed the Malaysian Solidarity Convention, which had been meeting and coordinating our activities to mobilise the people to stand up for a non-communal society. We had set out to create a broad coalition that could press the Alliance government in Kuala Lumpur for a “Malaysian Malaysia”, not a Malay Malaysia – no easy matter, since the ruling Alliance itself was dominated by the Tunku’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

I was also filled with remorse and guilt for having had to deceive the prime ministers of Britain, Australia and New Zealand. In the last three weeks, while they had been giving me and Singapore their quiet and powerful support for a peaceful solution to Malaysia’s communal problems, I had been secretly discussing this separation.

All these thoughts preyed on me during the three weeks of our negotiations with Razak, the Tunku’s deputy. As long as the battle of wills was on, I kept my cool. But once the deed was done, my feelings got the better of me.

While I was thus overwhelmed, the merchants in Singapore’s Chinatown were jubilant. They set off firecrackers to celebrate their liberation from communal rule by the Malays from Kuala Lumpur, carpeting the streets with red paper debris. The Chinese language newspaper
Sin Chew Jit Poh
, reporting that people had fired the crackers to mark this great day, said with typical Chinese obliqueness, “It could be that they were anticipating Zhong Yuan Jie (the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts).” It added an enigmatic phrase, “In each individual’s heart is his own prayer.” The
Nanyang Siang Pau
wrote, “The heart knows without having to announce it.”