The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (92 page)

I had let down many people in Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak. They had responded to our call of a Malaysian Malaysia. Had they not done so and there was no danger of widespread racial collisions if the Malaysian government arrested us, Singapore would not have been expelled. Because they rallied round and felt as passionately as we did about a Malaysian Malaysia, we were expelled. By accepting separation, I had failed them. That sense of guilt made me break down. It was my moment of anguish. The deed was done, but I was overwrought at the thought of all the shattered hopes of the millions we had aroused. But while I felt crushed and distraught, there was rejoicing in Chinatown. The merchants let off a barrage of Chinese firecrackers to celebrate their freedom from communal oppression, but in the city itself, office workers were apprehensive that there could be communal trouble, and by four in the afternoon it was unusually quiet – people had gone home early.

Meeting the press on the morning of Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, 9 August 1965.

For me, it was a very full day, with people I had to meet, and work I had to attend to. My last visitor was Antony Head, who flew in from Kuala Lumpur to see me that night at Sri Temasek. I kept up a bold front, asking him whether he had instructions from his government to extend recognition to Singapore. Of course he had not – there had not been time. Inwardly, I was sorry to have repaid his unremitting efforts to keep Malaysia on track by concealing from him any hint of the impending separation. But I had had no choice. When the news reached London, Harold Wilson was on holiday in the Scilly Isles and Arthur Bottomley, secretary of state for Commonwealth Relations, was in West Africa. The foreign secretary, Michael Stewart, flew to the Scillies for discussions with Wilson, and on 10 August, I received the following message from Wilson through the acting deputy British high commissioner in Singapore:

“I wanted to let you know that we have decided to recognise Singapore as an independent state right away, and that we are announcing this in tomorrow morning’s papers. I have seen your message and I much appreciate your kind words. I am glad to know that you want to work on terms of friendship with us. I must say that I was disappointed that we were not consulted before this important step was taken, because, of course, it has major implications for us. We are now thinking very urgently about these. But you may be sure that we wish you well. I am concerned that Sukarno may try to use this development for his own ends. I am sure you will agree that we must all be careful to avoid anything which might help him to make capital out of it.”

Wilson’s decision had been swift, and once the British government recognised our independence I was confident that we would not have any difficulty in winning international acceptance. But feelings abroad were divided along Cold War lines. While there was jubilation in Jakarta, Moscow and Beijing, there was deep disappointment and anxiety in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the West in general.

The reaction of Indonesia was uncertain. On 9 August, Dr Subandrio, the foreign minister, was euphoric: separation proved that Malaysia was a British neo-colonial creation, and Indonesia was now prepared to open diplomatic relations with Singapore. But the next day, after a 90-minute meeting with President Sukarno, he said his government found it difficult to accept the independence of Singapore because of the presence of British military bases there. He did not completely rule out eventual recognition, and authoritative sources confided that Indonesia would have no objection to the bases as long as they were used solely for the island’s own defence. In that case, Jakarta might exclude it from Confrontation until the situation crystallised. Indonesia was ready to welcome Singapore as a friend if she could prove she would not allow herself to be used as a stepping stone for aggression by foreign powers.

I replied that Singapore needed the British bases, that if they were closed, 44,000 workers would lose their jobs and the island would be defenceless. Then on 17 August, Indonesia’s Independence Day, Sukarno made a powerful and virulent speech in which he told the United States and Britain to get out of Southeast Asia and warned them that the axis of Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Beijing and Pyongyang would defeat imperialism in the region. Next, he ordered the seizure of all American capital in Indonesia. He was living dangerously – as he put it,
“Viva perilissimo”
. The Indonesian economy was unravelling by the day, with hyperinflation making the people’s lives impossible.

The reactions of the opposition in Singapore revealed their political immaturity. The Singapore Alliance said they were shocked that the PAP
had agreed to secession without a fresh mandate from the people, because it did not conform to the wishes they had expressed in the 1962 referendum. Singapore UMNO called for a general election and said that they would fight for the reincorporation of the state into Malaysia. But the most ludicrous response was that of the Barisan Sosialis, who refused to accept the island’s “phoney” independence on the grounds that it was a British plot to maintain their domination over it.

The day after separation, Chin Chye and I saw three leaders of the Malaysian Solidarity Convention in the Cabinet Room. It was one of the most painful meetings of my life. I explained how it had all happened, but whatever the reasons, we had let them down and let them down badly. I had to sum up the future publicly by telling the press that since it was necessary for us to be “very correct in our relations with our neighbour and one neighbouring government did not interfere in the political affairs of another”, the PAP could no longer be a member of the convention. I was emotional as I went on:

“But for a very small number of people, what we stood for could easily have done a great deal of good for Malaysia and established it for many centuries to come as a stable and viable multiracial nation. … Kinship and feelings for one another cannot be legislated out by a political decision.”

Chin Chye was full of bitterness and remorse.

The most sincere and thoughtful statement on the separation came from Ismail. He spoke at the United Nations when Malaysia, Jordan and the Ivory Coast sponsored Singapore’s application for membership on 20 September:

“Notwithstanding the separation, there is the fullest awareness in the leadership both of Malaysia and of Singapore that, constitutionally separated as the two states may be from each other, the identity of their interests and the intertwined activity of the people in every facet of human life, having been pulled together by the inescapable incidence of geography, subjected to a long and common administration by the accident of history, will, as in the decades past, create the incentive and provide the encouragement to live together as good neighbours. In a variety of common tasks, we share the same attitudes and prize the same ideals. The constitutional bond has been severed; the human bond remains.”

Choo and I, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Tun Ismail Abdul Rahman and his wife at Sri Temasek, Istana, April 1972, seven years after separation.

It was Ismail who understood and sympathised most with what I wanted to do. But he was only number three, and even if he had been number one, I doubt whether he would have been strong enough to control the Ultras and carry out his policy: the gradual reduction of the privileges of the Malays as they progressed until there was a non-communal society with all races on an equal footing.

One man who almost understood what had happened and why it did was Antony Head. On 11 August, the day after London extended recognition, he said in Kuala Lumpur that the defence agreement by which Britain held military bases in Singapore and Malaysia would now have to be rewritten: this would be only a formality, however, if there were no policy changes. I had great respect for Head, his strength of character, his wisdom and insight into the ways of men and nations. He was to return to Britain although he had been in Kuala Lumpur for less than two years. I wrote to him on 14 September:

“I write to tell you that although we have not always seen eye to eye on the solutions to our problems in Malaysia, I never thought, as you once said over lunch, that you were a fool. On the contrary, I knew you were an exceptionally perceptive and shrewd observer, and furthermore a rugged representative of Her Majesty’s Government.

“I am sorry that you will be going in January. Your successor will be in greater need of the qualities of ruggedness which from time to time did not endear you to the Tunku.

“May I thank you for having helped to prevent the Tunku from scrubbing out my government and myself. I happen to have other
sources of information, and knew that you were doing your utmost for your government to dissuade the Tunku from doing what comes naturally. That was also what the Ultras wanted him to do.”

What were the real reasons for the Tunku, Razak and Ismail to want Singapore out of Malaysia? They must have concluded that if they allowed us to exercise our constitutional rights, they were bound to lose in the long run. The Malaysian Solidarity Convention would have rallied the non-Malays and, most dangerous of all, eventually made inroads into the Malay ground on the peninsula. The attitudes and policies of the PAP had already won the unswerving loyalty of our Malay leaders in Singapore; they never wavered even under the stress of the race riots in 1964, nor did they respond to appeals to race, religion or culture, or to the usual blandishments offered to draw them back into the UMNO fold.

This was the nub of the matter. The PAP leaders were not like the politicians in Malaya. Singapore ministers were not pleasure-loving, nor did they seek to enrich themselves. UMNO had developed to a fine art the practice of accommodating Chinese or Indian ministers in Malaya who proved troublesome, and had, within a few years, extended its practice to Sabah and Sarawak. Razak once offered Keng Swee 5,000 acres of the best quality rubber land, to be planted with seedlings of the best high-yielding strains from the Rubber Research Institute. With an embarrassed laugh, Keng Swee protested that he would not know what to do with it and ducked the inducement.

Nor was it easy to compromise us. Keng Swee and I once accompanied the Tunku and Tan Siew Sin to a “mess” in Kuala Lumpur run by wealthy Chinese merchants. These “messes” were men’s clubs where excellent food was provided by the best restaurants, where members and their friends could gamble at mahjong or poker, and where attractive call girls and even starlets were available. We had a good meal, and when they played poker afterwards, I joined in. But as soon as the girls arrived,
Keng Swee and I pleaded pressing engagements and made ourselves scarce. We could not afford to give hostages to fortune. If we had stayed, we would thereafter have been open to pressure from the Malaysian leaders. They considered us difficult, almost as dangerous and elusive to handle as the communists, and much too ideological. Worse, we always acted constitutionally and hence were difficult to fix.

If there had been no Indonesian Confrontation, the Tunku and his colleagues would not have had to depend on the help of British, Australian and New Zealand defence forces, and the outcome would have been different. Because these forces helped to defend Malaysia, their parliaments would have reacted strongly if Malaysia had used unconstitutional methods against Singapore.