The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (50 page)

We had also finally agreed on the state arms, with a lion and a tiger as the supporting animals on two sides of a shield containing a crescent moon with five stars, and a scroll below with the Malay words
Majulah Singapura
, which mean “May Singapore Flourish”.

The choice of state anthem had proved easier. A Malay musician, Haji Zubir Said, had composed a suitable tune. It was not a martial, stirring tune like the French
Marseillaise
or the Chinese national anthem
Arise, Arise, Arise
, the song of the revolutionary resistance. The melody was of the region and the lyrics in Malay matched our motto,
Majulah Singapura
.

In spite of the stumbles in our first six months of office, we did lay the foundations of many important government policies, including the first move in a building programme that was to transform Singapore. In February 1960, we dissolved the Singapore Improvement Trust and divided its functions between the Housing and Development Board (HDB), which was placed under the minister for national development, and the Planning Authority, which came under the prime minister. We then made Lim Kim San chairman of the HDB. This was a crucial appointment. Kim San had been Keng Swee’s contemporary in Anglo-Chinese School and at Raffles College. He was a businessman, a practical, inventive person who had designed his own sago-processing machine. He managed his father-in-law’s
pawnshops and his father’s petrol stations, besides being a director of one of the bigger local banks. He was a man of many skills. Keng Swee wanted to make sure that any money given to the HDB for housing the people would be well spent, and Kim San would see to it. Ong Eng Guan was not to be allowed to waste public money.

Shortly after he was appointed, Kim San came to see me. As minister for national development, Ong had ordered him to hire construction workers direct and so cut out building contractors who, being middlemen, were “exploiters of the workers”. He wanted the HDB to become a model employer. Kim San was nonplussed. He asked me, “Do you want me to build houses or do you want me to be an employer of construction workers? If you want flats, then I know how to get the flats built; you leave it to me, I will produce you the flats. If you want me to hire workers direct, better get another chairman. Every contractor has his own supervisors, his relatives and trusted foremen who are either related to him or old retainers. In turn, they hire their gangs of workers and they know every person in their group and pay according to results.”

This was another of Ong’s political gimmicks to put himself in a good light. I overruled him and told Kim San to proceed in the way he thought best. He produced the flats. There was a big fire in June 1960, when some 30,000 people in a squatter area, known as Bukit Ho Swee, were rendered homeless. Within 18 months, Kim San had housed them in one-room flats with communal kitchens and communal toilets. He also put up a block in my constituency along Cantonment Road, a prominent location. My voters could see it going up, and were looking forward to moving in. Had it not been nearing completion at the time of the next election, I might not have been re-elected.

All new governments want to prove themselves by passing many new laws and launching many new projects. We hit the ground running, before the phrase was coined. In February 1960, I announced plans for the reorganisation of the Singapore Harbour Board into the Port of Singapore Authority. Next, we moved the first reading of the Women’s Charter to bring Singapore into the modern era of monogamy and equal rights. Then we legislated for an Industrial Relations Court, based on the Australian model, and appointed Charles Gamba, professor of economics at the University of Malaya, as its president. As the arbitrator in the Hock Lee bus strike, he was known to be sympathetic to labour, but was not likely to kill off the employers. We launched a family planning programme with 1,000 volunteers who were trained as lay workers to promote it among the public, keen to reduce the 4 per cent annual increase in the population. Most important was a bill to give ourselves wider powers to combat corruption. It was the first of several that strengthened the law so that offenders could be charged and convicted in court. It led to the creation of a new agency, the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, which has helped to keep Singapore clean.

HDB Chairman Lim Kim San speaking at the completion ceremony of HDB flats at Cantonment Road on 10 April 1964. I was seated behind him.

Kim San and me inside a newly occupied three-room flat that evening of 10 April, then a poorer Singapore.

We announced we would give equal financial aid to the University of Malaya (in Singapore) and Nanyang University, but would require equal standards. Impertinent as always, the Nanyang University Students’ Union said in their organ, the
University Tribune
, that while they were happy with equal treatment, they wanted the aid to be unconditional. We were not amused, but did not say so. We improved the prospects of the Chinese-educated by allowing them to advance through the University of Malaya. We started pre-university courses of three terms in the arts, law and science faculties for qualified non-English language students to prepare them as students of the University of Malaya.

However, our economic plans made little headway. In September, we had talks with the Malayans about forming a limited common market, but they were even less forthcoming than before. Things were so bad that when a local manufacturer planned to expand his cotton-spinning textile mill to include weaving and finishing, it was big news because it would increase the labour force by 300. We were desperate for jobs.

Tourism was then an infant industry in Asia, as most tourists visited developed countries. We had a “Visit the Orient” year for 1961 with an air display, television and radio exhibition, motor show, orchid show, photographic exhibition and the State Day celebrations on 3 June, followed by a two-week cultural festival. It was a thin programme of attractions.

We placed our hopes on a United Nations Technical Assistance Board team that arrived in October to survey a proposed industrial site at Jurong and advise on the types of industry suitable for it. We were fortunate in the choice of the leader, Dr Albert Winsemius. A Dutch industrialist, he spent three months in Singapore and made the first of his many contributions that were to be crucial to Singapore’s development. He was a practical, hard-headed businessman with a grasp of the economics of post-World War II Europe and America. He was to play a major role in our later economic planning.

We were then heavily dependent on trade, especially entrepot transactions. The previous month, an Indonesian team had arrived to discuss how to eliminate “irregular trade”, and to improve their foreign exchange earnings. They wanted us to credit Indonesia with foreign exchange for a substantial percentage of the value of their exports to Singapore, in return for which they would buy an agreed quantity of goods through us. But it would be extremely difficult to get the private sector to cooperate; nobody would declare the value of his imports from or exports to Indonesia, or what or how much he had actually bought or sold and at what price; the Indonesian shippers would under-invoice the value of their goods, and often used the same export permit to send a second consignment of goods; and so it went on.

Aggravated by the employment situation, the threat posed by the communists loomed larger than ever. The Internal Security Council was getting increasingly unhappy about their growing strength in the unions, and wanted the Singapore government to move against them. I refused. If we did that, we could end up like Lim Yew Hock, simply arresting
activists, and that would be like lopping off daisies; more would sprout. Goode had admitted this to me before I took office. But I was under constant pressure from the Malayan side to act.

Wearing his other hat as UK commissioner and chairman of the Internal Security Council, Goode had held its first meeting in August. Ong Eng Guan, Pang Boon and I represented Singapore, and Dr Ismail bin Dato Abdul Rahman, minister for external affairs, the Malayan government. Ismail, a doctor, was short, slightly tubby and dark for a Malay. He had curly hair and a moustache, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and a pipe was never far from his lips. He was a quiet, reserved man and a keen golfer. To get along with him, I again took up golf, which I had neglected. I came to like and respect him for his direct and straightforward manner. He knew what his job was – the security of Malaya. He took advice from his officials who were experts on communism and subversion, and was determined that the Malayan Chinese communists were not going to win. He was sceptical of the PAP policy and tactics against the communists, and it took some time for me to convince him that we had to adopt a different approach because our mass base was a Chinese-speaking majority that was susceptible to communist persuasion and pressure.

As I got to know the Malayan ministers better, he was the one I trusted absolutely. He was honest and sincere in his dealings with me, and I believe he reciprocated my friendship and respect for him. He was number three in the leadership of UMNO, after the Tunku and the deputy prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak. He did not have the Tunku’s charisma and status as a Malay aristocrat, nor Razak’s quicker mind, but Ismail was the soundest, and a decisive leader. When the Tunku retired, Razak as prime minister made Ismail deputy prime minister. He would have made a very good prime minister had he not died rather young from a heart problem.

At that first meeting, Singapore presented two papers: one from the professionals in Special Branch and the other from the ministers seeking the release of those who were closely associated with the PAP at the time they were detained. Goode pointed out that the Special Branch experts had reported that past events were repeating themselves – there was the same build-up of communist strength to challenge the government – and he asked whether it would not be wise to intervene and crush the monster now before it got too big. I disagreed. Goode pressed me to explain our policy. The broad policy, I said, was not to be outmanoeuvred by the communists. If we did not first prepare the ground so that the neutral Chinese-speaking workers understood that their leaders were being arrested because they were doing harm to the economy and thus threatening their jobs, we would lose them. They must not be allowed to believe that the leaders were detained because they were good trade unionists who happened to be pro-communist.