The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (85 page)

As the attacks on me continued in the Malaysian papers, several Australians and New Zealanders wrote to the
Straits Times
to defend me. An Australian journalist protested that he had heard me speak several times to university audiences, and at no time had he heard me say anything disparaging about the Malaysian leaders. The president of the Asian Studies Society of Victoria University in Wellington also wrote in to say he was surprised to hear reports from Malaysia that I had been criticised for making “irresponsible statements attacking leaders of the central government”. Nothing he had heard supported these allegations.

The truth was that my first sin in the eyes of the Alliance leaders was to have received a favourable press in New Zealand and Australia. They also knew from the Malaysian high commissioners in Wellington and Canberra that I had been warmly received by both prime ministers and their cabinets. But their main grievance was that my arguments and
my analysis of the situation had carried weight with both governments. Following the barrage of accusations that I had maligned the Tunku, his ministers and Malaysia generally, I issued a statement that everything I said had been recorded on tape, it was available for checking, and I stood by every word of it. I specifically denied accusing the central government of working only for the Malays as Dr Lim Swee Aun of the MCA, the federal minister for commerce and industry, had claimed, and released a verbatim extract of what I had said on special Malay rights in answer to a question from a Malaysian student in Adelaide:

“No, I don’t think that the issue at the moment is the clause providing for special rights for the Malays. … And if the immigrant communities of people of immigrant stock do not see the problems, if they can’t feel what it is like to be a poor Malay, and don’t feel for him, then I say very soon he will manifest his disaffection in a very decisive way and the whole country will be thrown into turmoil.”

My charge was not that there were special rights for the Malays, but that they would not solve the problems because they favoured only a few at the top:

“How does giving bus licences or licences to run bus companies to one or two hundred Malay families solve the problem of Malay poverty? The Malays are farmers. In Australia and New Zealand, all the farmers are wealthy people. How is it that in Malaysia farmers are poor? Because there is no agricultural research, seed selection, fertilisation, improvement in double-cropping techniques, what cash crops you can grow.”

My statement was reported in the Chinese and English language newspapers but not in the Malay press. Nor was it carried on Radio & Television Malaysia. So as far as the Malays were concerned, there was no denial by me, and the
Utusan Melayu
was able to keep on stirring up the ground against me.

The Tunku was angered, and warned Singapore leaders that the central government would not be pushed around by any state government on any matter. Singapore, he said, had come into the Federation “with their eyes wide open and on their own accord”. He added:

(Singapore) “would perhaps have been made a second Cuba and the position for us would be untenable … and that was why the central government supported the PAP. With the return of the PAP into power, we considered that Singapore was safe from the communists. But little did we realise that the leader of the PAP had in his mind a share in the running of Malaysia. This we considered as unacceptable since the Alliance is strong enough to run the country on its own.”

Two weeks after my return to Singapore, I wrote a letter to Sir Robert Menzies summarising the difficulties of making a success of a multiracial society like Malaysia. In this letter, dated 20 April 1965, I set out the position as my colleagues and I saw it in April 1965. We felt in our bones that if things carried on as they did, something disastrous would happen.

Menzies’ reply in May 1965 was supportive but carefully balanced:

“I can assure you that I want to see, for all our sakes, a sensible and friendly settlement, which I am sure would make Malaysia a living and secure structure. Meanwhile, I urge patience as the constant companion of your unquestioned abilities.

“I will not need to tell you that, if my own influence is to have significance, I must not form any judgements in advance and it must not be made to appear that I have done so.”

He recognised that the Australian government would be hard put to justify to its electorate why they should defend a repressive Malay government that was putting down non-Malays – non-Malays who had willingly joined the Federation with a multiracial constitution to which the Tunku and Razak had agreed in London in July 1963.

40. UMNO’s “Crush Lee” Campaign

Beneath the increasingly acrimonious exchanges between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur lay a deeper and more fundamental clash between Tan Siew Sin and Keng Swee. Tan was out to block Singapore’s economic progress, and this became clear over the issue of pioneer certificates. The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) had to send to Kuala Lumpur for approval all applications of prospective investors in the island for pioneer certificates that would entitle them to tax-free status for between five and ten years. But during the two years we were in Malaysia, out of 69 applications, only two were approved, one of which had so many restrictions attached that it amounted to a refusal. To make doubly sure that Singapore would be thwarted, on 16 February, Tan publicly advised all industrialists to consult the central government before investing in Singapore so as to avoid “disappointments and misunderstandings” due to wrong assumptions and calculations. He gratuitously added that “assurances given by experts (in Singapore) were not always feasible”.

Not satisfied with blocking us, Tan wanted to take over our entire textile quota. The federal government had claimed quotas for woven textiles and made-up garments when they did not even have factories in which to produce them. Meanwhile, three Singapore textile factories had already been forced to retrench nearly 2,000 workers. Keng Swee said ironically that Singapore was being treated not as a constituent state of Malaysia, but as a dangerous rival to be kept down at all costs. The central government wanted to use the Singapore quota to establish a new garment industry in Malaya while depriving large numbers of unemployed garment workers in Singapore a chance of re-employment.
In the end, under gentle pressure from Antony Head, Kuala Lumpur was shamed into giving back the quota to Singapore. By then, Keng Swee was convinced not only that we would not get a common market, but that Tan would seek to siphon off all industrial investments into Malaya regardless of what the investors wanted. He felt totally frustrated.

Keng Swee recounted in his oral history (1981):

“Tan Siew Sin acted on his own to spite us. Tan was very jealous of Singapore and very envious of Mr Lee. He saw the PAP as a threat to the MCA’s leadership of the Chinese in the peninsula and therefore did not want Singapore to succeed. They (MCA ministers Tan and Lim Swee Aun) acted in utter bad faith. And that is why the longer we stayed in Malaysia, the more doubtful we became that we did the right thing.”

Keng Swee then referred to a conversation he had had with Leonard Rist, the World Bank expert who advised the Malayan and Singapore governments on the common market and had recommended that it be implemented in progressive stages.

Keng Swee asked, “Suppose he (Tan) does not play the game and the common market does not get off the ground – what happens?”

Rist answered, “In that event, Mr Minister, it’s not the common market which should be in danger; the whole concept of Malaysia would be in danger.”

Keng Swee was completely disenchanted. Although he had been against our taking part in the 1964 election in Malaya, he now recognised that it was as well that we had, for it enabled us to rally political opinion, which could restrain the excesses of the central government. He had given up any hope of cooperation. He expected no good to come out of Malaysia. Indeed, he expected endless problems. His gloom made Chin Chye even more determined to build some counterweight to the arbitrariness of the centre. Tan’s spite was one powerful reason why we had to mobilise the ground throughout the Federation.

The race issue overshadowed everything else. During a session of the federal parliament in November 1964, Dr Lim Chong Eu, MP and leader of the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) based in Penang, commiserated with me over the two race riots we had suffered in Singapore. He said he had experienced it all. From his description of the disorders in Penang in the 1950s, I realised that what Albar and his UMNO Turks had applied in Singapore was a well-tested method. The police and the army held the ring while favouring the Malay rioters – usually
bersilat
groups, thugs and gangsters let loose to make mischief. Once passions were aroused and enough Chinese counter-attacked, even ordinary Malays joined in. When the Chinese hit back, they were clobbered by the police and army: law and order were enforced against them, not against the Malays. The result was a sullen, cowed population.

We had jumped out of the frying pan of the communists into the fire of the Malay communalists. We had to find a counter to this system of intimidation through race riots, with Chinese being killed and maimed wherever they dared to resist Malay domination. We decided that one effective defence would be to link the opposition in all the towns in the Federation in one network, so that a riot in one major city triggered off riots in others to a point where the police and army would be unable to cope, and all hell would be let loose. So we set out to mobilise fellow sufferers who could together put up this counter-threat. If we could find them in Sabah and Sarawak as well as on the mainland, the Chinese in Kuching, Sibu and Jesselton (now renamed Kota Kinabalu) would also riot, and any communal intimidation by Kuala Lumpur would risk tearing Malaysia apart.

Our moves to unite did not escape attention. On 24 April 1965, the Tunku disclosed in a speech that there were plans for an opposition get-together. He knew the non-Malays were combining forces to make a stand for a multiracial Malaysia, as against a Malay Malaysia, and he
suspected I was to be their leader. He warned, “But the people should, however, make a study of this man before they give their heart and soul to any such move. The Alliance and Mr Lee Kuan Yew have worked together for Malaysia, but we found it difficult to carry on after Malaysia.” The Tunku had good reason to be concerned. The opposition MPs in the federal parliament had been getting increasingly restive as they listened to the racist speeches made by Albar and the young UMNO Malay leaders. Dr Lim Chong Eu of the UDP in Penang, the two Seenivasagam brothers of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in Perak, Ong Kee Hui and Stephen Yong of the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) and Donald Stephens and Peter Mojuntin of the United Pasok Momogun Kadazan Organisation (UPKO) in Sabah had all by then made overtures to suggest a link-up with the PAP.

The process had begun in January when Dr Lim and Stephens had come to see me separately. Neither meeting had been entirely satisfactory. Dr Lim wanted me to become president of his consumers’ association in order to bring about a broad united front of all non-communal parties in Malaysia. I declined. If we came together it must be done openly, not surreptitiously through a consumers’ association, or we would lose credibility. Stephens was proposing to leave the Alliance, quit his token appointment as federal minister of Sabah affairs, and get his UPKO members to resign from the Sabah cabinet to prepare for the coming state election. He wanted the PAP to merge with UPKO before that in order to help him win over the Chinese votes in the towns and thus ensure him of a majority in the Sabah State Assembly. The son of an Australian father and a Kadazan mother, he was a big, affable, overweight, pleasure-loving journalist who owned a newspaper in Sabah; chief minister until he joined the federal government, he was the ablest of the Kadazans of his time. But he was not interested in my wider project for a united front that would take in the other opposition parties.

Despite these false starts, I circulated a note to all ministers:

“If we miss this moment, it may be years before we are able to get an equally dramatic occasion for a realignment of forces within Malaysia. On the other hand, taking such a step by which all non-communal parties get together must mean a broad opposition led mainly by the non-Malays against the Alliance led by the Malays in UMNO. Once such a convention has been called and a chain reaction triggered off in men’s minds, we can be sure that the fight would very quickly become sharp and acute.”

When UMNO already treated us as an opponent and clearly would not cooperate with us, it was a waste of time to postpone a decision. As far as UMNO was concerned, the fight was on, and unless we gathered strength to meet it, UMNO would always have its own way.

On 12 February, Malaysian opposition leaders had met Chin Chye, Raja and myself at Sri Temasek in Singapore, and again on 1 March at Singapore House in Kuala Lumpur, where Stephens turned up in his official car with a flag fluttering and a bodyguard. We thought him rather brave to have done this, until the Tunku came out with his statement on 24 April when we deduced that Stephens had leaked our plans to him. We had decided to move with caution and had sent Lee Khoon Choy and Eddie Barker (my old friend and former partner in Lee & Lee, then minister for law) to assess the political situation in Sarawak and Sabah. They came back convinced we should not open PAP branches in Sarawak. The Chinese there were very strongly left-wing as in the days of the Barisan in Singapore; they were still resentful at having been bundled into Malaysia, and at the PAP for having helped to bring it about. In Sabah, we were likely to get Chinese support and it was feasible to open PAP branches, but we would have to form a coalition with Stephens’ UPKO, whose Kadazan supporters were in the majority. I decided not to move into East Malaysia directly, but to work with the present leaders of the opposition there. Chin Chye invited them to a meeting in Singapore
on 8 May. Stephens absented himself, but the heads of the UDP (Penang), the PPP (Perak) and the SUPP and Machinda Party (Sarawak) attended and signed a declaration with us calling for a Malaysian Malaysia: