The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (67 page)

I took the British into my confidence because I needed their support, or at least their neutrality, in order to implement my plan to demonstrate to the Tunku the folly of trying to install a Lim Yew Hock government that he could control. I told Moore I proposed to inflict a crushing electoral defeat on Lim Yew Hock and the Alliance in Singapore to show the Tunku and Razak that they had to do business with the PAP and no one else. For this, I intended to hold elections for our 15 Singapore representatives in the federal parliament immediately after the signing of the Malaysia treaty in London, which was expected to take place in February, and before its implementation in August 1963, when the Tunku would get control of the police. I would create the 15 constituencies by amalgamating the existing 51 into groups of three or four. I believed UMNO would get only one seat, and the PAP could outdo the Barisan by winning eight or even nine.

I told Moore that Razak and Tan Siew Sin had made no progress in building up the Alliance in Singapore. They were dithering about what to do next, but there was no doubt that they intended to cut the PAP down to size. For example, the
Straits Times
was printing views that its editors knew to be unacceptable to the Singapore government, and this
could only mean that they had the full backing of the Tunku. It was a declaration of war on their part, and I would retaliate at an appropriate moment. Again, Kuala Lumpur wanted to control local broadcasting and television, although it had been agreed that Singapore would be responsible for their administration and day-to-day programmes. Their object was to limit the government’s political capability, particularly during elections. Meanwhile, Tan, determined to show who was the boss in financial matters, claimed for the federal government a far higher percentage of Singapore’s revenue than had been agreed. He had already proved difficult in negotiations over forming a common market, and a decision on it had had to be postponed while experts studied the question.

When I saw Lansdowne on 27 November, I spoke frankly of my problems over merger. On the collection of taxes, Singapore had fully accepted that finance was a federal responsibility, but we could not agree that Kuala Lumpur would collect the taxes and then hand over Singapore’s share to us. Singapore must do the collecting and hand over the federal contribution to Kuala Lumpur, otherwise we would find ourselves out in the cold. As for control of information and broadcasting, that was essential for any government if it was to communicate with its citizens. In federal hands, the approach to Chinese problems would be insensitive, go hopelessly wrong, and be politically costly. As an instance, I recounted how the Tunku had created a problem for himself when in India. He had denounced the Chinese as the aggressors in the Sino-Indian frontier war of 1962, when it was far from certain who was in the wrong. Only after someone had pointed out the bad effect this was having on the Chinese of Malaya did he change his vocabulary and refer to the issue as one between Chinese communists and Indian democrats.

After mentioning other points of contention, I told Lansdowne that while my personal relations with the Tunku were good, politically, he wanted somebody more amenable in control of Singapore. I then explained my intention to hold elections for our 15 seats in the federal
parliament. He was worried about the effect this would have on the Tunku. I said he would not be delighted, but however resentful and frustrated he might feel, he would learn that his protégés in Singapore were politically finished, and that he could not breathe life into them however much patronage and open support he gave them. Lansdowne urged me to improve our relations by talking candidly to the Tunku about these matters. I said that much as I would like to, the Tunku was not the sort of man one could get to grips with, because conversations with him often drifted into vague pleasantries.

The impact I was making on the British at this time was reflected in Moore’s 5 December report to Ian Wallace at the Colonial Office:

“His plan for the merger of Singapore with the Federation was based on the assumption that he would have a working arrangement with the Tunku whereby the Alliance government would take over the task of maintaining internal security in Singapore while the PAP would run the state government of Singapore. This plan presupposed that the Tunku would be willing to do business with Lee.

“He is anxious to hold the election before Malaysia is implemented because he will still have complete control over the machinery of the government, including especially the police and broadcasting. … Lee has said that he would much prefer to hold the election with the Tunku’s consent. He does not want this to be a declaration of war on the Tunku but he does regard it as absolutely necessary to consolidate his own political position and to demonstrate that the Alliance cannot hope to win power in Singapore. If the Tunku refused to agree to the Malaysian election being held before 31 August 1963, Lee claims that he could hold such elections under Singapore legislation and they would have the necessary political impact whatever their legal validity. Lee has asked us to treat as strictly confidential his idea of holding elections before 31 August 1963 and in particular not to let it be known to anybody in the Federation. …

“Lee said he was very appreciative of the efforts by Lord Lansdowne, Lord Selkirk and others to persuade the Tunku that it
was in his interest to do business with the PAP and he felt that we had achieved something which was quite impossible for him to do on his own. … It is an uphill task, particularly in the face of the Tunku’s very understandable distrust of Lee, but the best hope of political stability for Singapore within Malaysia still lies in the two prime ministers coming to some effective working arrangement. The alternatives are either a Barisan Sosialis government in Singapore or, if the Barisan Sosialis are destroyed by arrest and proscription, a hostile PAP government with Lee Kuan Yew making an open bid for Chinese chauvinistic support in opposition to the Malays in Kuala Lumpur. I doubt whether the Federation government fully appreciate as yet how dangerous a situation the latter could be. They may find Lee Kuan Yew extremely awkward as a colleague; most people do; but they would find him far more dangerous as an opponent.”

I was fortunate in that the British understood and sympathised with my point of view. They saw that the way Kuala Lumpur governed their own Chinese would not work in Singapore. The Chinese of Singapore would not be browbeaten; they were accustomed to conditions in a British colony, they had never been under Malay rule, and strong-arm tactics would be bound to stir up violent resistance. And I needed British support to get the Singapore state constitution promulgated in London through an “Order in Council” in a form that would not prevent me from holding elections for the 15 seats.

Just three days after Moore sent his report, a whole new dimension was added to the situation. Suddenly, on 8 December, a revolt broke out in Brunei. Armed rebels calling themselves the North Borneo National Army and claiming to be 30,000-strong seized the oil town of Seria. The British response was immediate. Two companies of Gurkhas and 300 British troops were air-lifted to Brunei, followed by the balance of two battalions. The troops quickly recaptured Seria, killing some of the
insurgents and capturing 500. Meanwhile, a quick-witted British commissioner of police had corralled the first group of rebels in Brunei Town in his tennis court, and kept them there before they could make further trouble. Within 48 hours, the rebellion had failed, and after Seria had been recaptured, mopping-up operations began.

The Barisan issued a foolish statement the day after the news of the revolt had broken, hailing it as a popular uprising against colonialism that merited the backing of all genuine anti-colonialists, and declaring that the Singapore and Federation governments would stand condemned if they did not oppose the British. Coming out in open support of rebellion like this was the second of two major errors on Lim Chin Siong’s part. The first was to have met their leader, A.M. Azahari, in Singapore two days before the revolt. As an earnest of what was to come, the Malayan Special Branch arrested 50 people, most of them Chinese, including the organising secretary of the Partai Rakyat of Malaya, and Singapore arrested three members of the local pro-Barisan Partai Rakyat linked to the group. We wanted to take action in conjunction with the Malayans to show solidarity.

The Brunei revolt had far wider implications, however. On 11 December, the Tunku referred in the federal parliament to the financial backing Azahari had received to carry out his rebellion, saying he had close connections with a number of people in countries that were Malaysia’s neighbours. He was alluding to Indonesia, where Defence Minister General Haris Nasution had announced that his government would be paying more attention to the areas close to British North Borneo following the Brunei uprising, and the president’s own Nationalist Party (the PNI) had expressed support for the Brunei Partai Rakyat. The backing had obviously come from Sukarno himself.

The British were alive to the danger this posed. Dealing with Azahari had been much simpler than dealing with the people behind him would be. The UK commissioner in Brunei, Sir Dennis White, was convinced
that the rebels had been certain of Indonesian assistance, otherwise their leaders would not have attacked Limbang (a sliver of land dividing Brunei in two) as it was part of the British colony of Sarawak and the British were bound to retaliate. He believed the Indonesians were encouraging them as a means of wrecking Malaysia, and contrary to press reports that made the revolt seem a comic, amateurish affair, he pointed out that it had been successful in the early stages despite the fact that it had gone off at half-cock. The insurgents had captured a number of police stations and seized many weapons; they had occupied the power station and cut off the electricity supply; they had held the UK commissioner’s secretary captive, and in Limbang, imprisoned the British Resident and his wife with other Europeans. Only the prompt arrival of the British and Gurkha troops had saved the situation.

A few days after the Tunku had voiced his suspicions, Sukarno confirmed them by saying, “What is happening there (Brunei) cannot be separated from the struggle of the New Emerging Forces. We take the side of the people who are struggling,” and in a live broadcast from Jakarta a few days later, he called on Indonesians to support the rebellion. Those who did not do so were traitors to their souls, he said. The Indonesian people were born in fire and had suffered for their independence. It was right for them to sympathise with those fighting for freedom. They were not like other nations (meaning Malaya) that had obtained their independence as a gift from the imperialists. The Tunku replied by pointing out that the Indonesian government and its political leaders were making fiery speeches although the rebellion in Brunei was now over; their aim was evidently to incite the people of the three Borneo territories to oppose their governments, and this would result in a calamity.

A war of words followed, with the Indonesians once again responding to the rhetoric of their charismatic leader. Working up public emotion through speeches and the media in order to trigger off popular demonstrations was part and parcel of Sukarno’s strategy. It had recently proved
effective when Jakarta demanded the return of West Irian (West New Guinea) from the Dutch, but now he needed another issue to keep the masses occupied and distracted from their parlous economic situation. On 23 December, several thousand people gathered in Jakarta’s Merdeka Square to burn two effigies, one of a Westerner, the other of a Malay with horn-rimmed glasses wearing a
songkok
(the Malay hat) – the Tunku. The Indonesians were gearing up for a campaign against Malaysia, ostensibly in support of independence for Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo.

Lim Chin Siong joined in the rhetoric, saying that the PAP was souring relations between Singapore and Indonesia over the Brunei revolt by spreading false rumours that Jakarta had engineered it and was anti-Chinese. No one had said this publicly before, and it scared the Chinese-speaking. People could sense that big forces were at work, that Singapore’s choice lay between joining Malaysia and going with the Tunku, or joining an anti-Chinese Indonesia to line up with the Indonesian Communist Party, the Barisan’s ideological partner. Furthermore, the revolt had now given the wrangling members of the Internal Security Council common ground for action.