The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (73 page)

“My own prediction is still that the PAP will get an overall majority, but most of the people whose judgement I respect are less optimistic and do not give them more than 20–24. A Barisan Sosialis majority cannot be ruled out. … However, even if the Barisan Sosialis did pursue fairly moderate policies in Singapore, it is difficult to see how the central government could tolerate them in power in Singapore for very long.”

The Tunku’s personal appearance to speak at Alliance rallies had been a most serious development. Whatever his personal wishes, the UMNO leadership and the pull of the local Malays had brought him quickly into Singapore politics. Also, Razak had talked to Selkirk a few months earlier about the possibility of “elections producing an alternative government to replace Lee”. All this meant that UMNO did not intend to allow the state to look after itself as we had agreed, and that sooner rather than later we would have to enter Malayan politics to defend our interests. I had hoped to postpone that contest for at least one election term. Now this no longer seemed possible.

The votes were counted on 21 September, and it proved an exciting night for in many constituencies the results were very close. Chin Chye beat Dr Lee Siew Choh by 89 votes and Raja won by fewer than 200. Kenny lost to the Barisan’s S.T. Bani by 159 votes. David Marshall, abandoned by the Barisan’s communists, lost his deposit in Anson. The hopes of Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan and the other detainees in Changi, who were listening to it all on the radio, were soon dashed as it became obvious that the PAP was not going to be routed, that the massive crowds at Barisan rallies had not reflected true popular support. We won 37 seats, the Barisan 13 and Ong Eng Guan’s UPP one. As one of them was to admit later, the Barisan were completely stunned.

The Tunku’s dream of having an SPA-UMNO-MCA-MIC Alliance in control of Singapore also vanished. All 42 of their candidates were eliminated. I was right in not agreeing to a complete clean-up of the communist open front leaders, otherwise the Alliance might have won enough seats to remain a potential force. But the most devastating blow for the Tunku was that the PAP had defeated UMNO in all three of its overwhelmingly Malay constituencies, which he had specially come down to Singapore to address on the eve of the election. Faced with the choice of a weak Alliance, a strong Barisan and a credible PAP, the Malays in the southern islands, Kampong Kembangan and Geylang Serai had voted for the PAP. We had strong Malay candidates, the best of whom was Yaacob bin Mohamed. This result was to have tremendous repercussions. We did not know until after the Malaysian election in April 1964 how ominously UMNO viewed this unexpected PAP victory and how vicious their counter-attacks would be.

After all the results had been announced, and well past midnight, I summed up over radio and television four and a half years of acute conflict and anxiety: “We reached this morning what is for the communists their moment of truth – that their masses were mythical.” Their cheerleaders, slogans, posters stuck all over the place to smother everybody and give an impression of inordinate numbers and invincibility – these “were exposed by you”. Next day, 22 September, Moore reported to London:

“This was a famous victory and the crowning achievement to date of Lee Kuan Yew’s career. It is a much more decisive victory than the 1959, since he won then with communist support but on this occasion he fought communists openly and decisively defeated them. …

“We have always said in Singapore that Lee Kuan Yew is the only man who can run this city and that the Malaysian government would either have to do business with him or put him in jail. The latter is now unthinkable and we must hope that enough moderation will be shown on both sides to make a working partnership possible. Lee spoke to me on the phone this morning and I took the opportunity of stressing to him the importance of not gloating too much over the Alliance defeat and concentrating on improving his relationship with Kuala Lumpur. He has made so many mistakes over this in the past and it is up to him to make a genuine effort to strike up a new relationship.”

Swearing in as prime minister before Yusof bin Ishak, the Yang di-Pertuan Negara, in 1963.

Three men played critical roles in the open fight to defeat the communists. Raja was superb. His fighting spirit never flagged. After the Barisan mounted their attacks on us in mid-1961, when everything looked bleak and we were in the depths of despair, Raja roared like a lion. They reviled the PAP as turncoats and renegades who had sold out the people; Raja answered in terms as pungent, rebutting and debunking them. He put his pamphleteering skills to work, and his robustness stiffened everybody’s morale. He was convinced that we were in the right, that we must fight, and that we would win.

Next, Pang Boon – quiet and soft-spoken, dependable and reliable, good in his assessments of who were loyal at PAP headquarters and in the party branches. He kept our loyalists together and in good heart, so that we had Chinese-educated party workers who became the core of an election organisation. Together with the grassroots community leaders, this made up for what had been demolished by the defecting Barisan supporters when the PAP split.

But my most important backroom player was Keng Swee, with his clear mind and sharp pen. He helped me refine the tactics that defeated the communists. For every clever move they made, we worked out a counter-move. Throughout this fight and for the next 21 years until he retired as deputy prime minister in 1984, he was my
alter ego
, always the sceptic, always turning a proposition on its head to reveal its flaws and help me reshape it. He was my resident intellectual
par excellence
and a doughty fighter. There were several other stalwarts, but these three stood out.

33. Konfrontasi

The 1963 election was a watershed for the communists. Soon after the results, two Barisan candidates who won – Chan Sun Wing, my former parliamentary secretary, and Wong Soon Fong, who had subverted the Works Brigade – dived underground. They must have expected to be picked up the moment the Barisan lost. But for the moment our sights were elsewhere. We had decided to make an example of prominent figures who had acted as front men for the communists, believing that their wealth and standing in the Chinese-speaking community gave them immunity. Number one on the list was Tan Lark Sye, then honorary president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the founder of Nanyang University. I had made a mental note to deal with him when the government had the political strength. Now we no longer needed to tolerate his spouting the communist line in the press, using his position in the business world as a shield.

The day after the election, we started proceedings to cancel his citizenship, which had been acquired by registration. A statement from my office read:

“The government has decided that no man, whatever his wealth, status and standing, shall with impunity play stooge to the communists and jeopardise the peace and prosperity of Singapore and the amity and unity of the races of Malaysia. … He had openly and blatantly intervened in these elections by signing statements drafted by these communists standing as Barisan Sosialis candidates denouncing the government, using as cover his so-called protection of Chinese language, culture and education.”

This action would have been unthinkable earlier. We were then fearful of alienating the Chinese-speaking voters, especially as the vernacular press would distort the issue and make it appear directed against businessmen who supported the cause of Chinese culture. Now the time had come to deal with him. Tan Lark Sye was helpless. No Lim Chin Siong with his unions came to the rescue, there were no protests in the newspapers, no demonstrations. We were neutering him politically. Asked to comment the next day, he had nothing to say. He had gambled and lost. He never regained his prominence.

A few days later, at a lunchtime meeting at Fullerton Square, I cleared the way for the post-election, post-merger situation: “I am giving the Plen two weeks. If he is still here, will he please get out; security is no more in my hands.” I added that it was now controlled by the central government, and I had to make his identity known to Ismail. From interrogation of communists who had fled to the neighbouring Riau Islands but later returned, Special Branch discovered years later that the Plen had already left Singapore soon after the referendum. He had remained in the Riau Islands, which were Indonesian, and from there directed his underground subordinates in Singapore through couriers. Travel by ferry or outboards between the two would have taken only two to four hours, and it was easy to escape detection because fishermen sailed to and fro all the time. So I was not exaggerating when I warned that the struggle against the MCP was not over, that they would continue to fight their enemies by fair means or foul and would prove hard and tricky to deal with. Nothing had changed – except one thing; I was no longer in charge of the police.

This point was driven home the next day when Special Branch, now under Federation orders, arrested 20 Nanyang University undergraduates, three of whom had fought unsuccessfully in the election as Barisan candidates. Students on the campus rioted, and a large crowd of them attacked the convoy taking the prisoners away. Two police vans of the
riot squad were waiting outside the gates, and, using loudhailers, the police ordered the demonstrators to disperse. When they did not do so, the riot squad moved in; the students threw bottles and stones at them, injuring the two drivers.

They had not yet learnt that Special Branch now took orders from a new government in Kuala Lumpur, based on a Malay majority with no inhibitions about dealing with Chinese students. Several thousand workers from seven big SATU unions, which had already been asked to show cause why their registration should not be cancelled, were driven to a meeting at the university campus in more than 100 lorries and buses. They still acted as if big mass rallies would intimidate the government. Members of the Naval Base Labour Union went on strike, led by supporters of Sidney Woodhull, now in detention, and 500 Nanyang University students sat down on the Padang opposite City Hall while their leaders presented a six-point petition to Chin Chye, talking as if the Barisan were still poised for victory as the next government. The following day, workers in the bus companies and in the many firms with unions affiliated to SATU called a two-day general strike.

A few hours before it began, 14 SATU officials were detained, including S.T. Bani, who had won in the Crawford constituency against Kenny Byrne. A crowd of a thousand workers then tried to march to the ministry of home affairs from the Padang but were dispersed by the riot squad, and by evening, some of the unions had begun to dissociate themselves from the strike. The neutrals were taking heart. They could see no future in playing the old games. As the strike petered out, the leaders called it off.

Dr Lee Siew Choh charged that once again I was using the communist bogey to divert attention from, instead of attending to, the issues at hand. But the world had changed. Woodhull and Puthucheary were released from detention on 28 November. They announced that they were staying out of unions and politics for good. Woodhull declared,
“Experience has shown me that communist activity has mucked things up for the non-communists.” As for Puthucheary, he wanted “nothing more to do with communism, to which I am opposed”. Woodhull and Puthucheary were leftists who prided themselves on being Marxists. They were not communists; indeed they would never have been accepted into the MCP. They lacked the necessary steadfastness and would have been a security risk to any cell they were part of. They were political dilettantes who enjoyed the cocktail circuit where they held forth.