The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (46 page)

Leading the PAP government after it had been sworn in at City Hall, June 1959.

After he had sworn us in, Goode, as the first Yang di-Pertuan Negara (head of state) and the last governor of Singapore, extended his congratulations. I replied, “It has been our good fortune, in the last few days, to have had the opportunity to deal with someone most conversant with the hopes and aspirations of our people and the limitations of our situation. … I hope that in the next six months of your office you will assist us in taking over effectively, smoothly and peacefully the reins of governing Singapore.”

After we were sworn in, everyone was keen to get cracking, to get to grips with his job and earn as much credit for us as possible before the euphoria wore off. We feared the communists would soon be busy eroding public support, with Lim Chin Siong and Fong fomenting industrial and social unrest. I knew from experience that enthusiasm
was not enough. To give of their best, the ministers had to have air-conditioned offices. That may sound odd, but without air-conditioning, efficient work in tropical Singapore would not have been feasible. After my first year at Laycock & Ong, I was made to sit in the main office. The heat, humidity and noise were hellish, especially in the afternoons. My energy was sapped, the clerks would work at only half the normal pace, typists would make mistakes, and lawyers more errors in correcting them, as well as in dictation. The high court was even worse, for we had to appear with wing collars and tabs and wear a black jacket under our barrister’s robes – a dress originally designed for the dank and cold of a London winter. A turning point in my life in terms of comfort and efficiency came in 1954, when Choo and I installed a one-horse-power air-conditioner in the bedroom. Thereafter, we never lost sleep because of the humid heat. So I encouraged air-conditioning for all government offices.

I took over the mayor’s office on the second floor of City Hall, sharing with Chin Chye, as deputy prime minister, a general office, a reception room and a conference room; for ease of communication, my secretary occupied the room between us. But Ong Eng Guan did not want to be with us in City Hall; he chose instead public housing premises in his own Hong Lim constituency as headquarters for his ministry of national development. I did not closely examine the reasons for this, and therefore agreed. I did not know that the building was totally unsuitable for a government office and needed extensive renovation; walls had to be knocked down, plumbing and electrical wiring changed, tables, filing cabinets and safes moved up narrow staircases or in small lifts. But these were minor considerations for Ong, administrative details that he ignored in his quest for a separate centre of power. He did not want to share the glory of City Hall with Chin Chye and me. It was only months later that I realised that his megalomania was undiminished. He wanted to outdo everyone else in the cabinet, to keep himself in the public eye as he had
when he was mayor. To this end, he announced plans for big expenditure without first clearing them with the finance minister or the cabinet, much to the consternation of other ministers.

Keng Swee had assumed the finance portfolio and moved into Fullerton Building. He was familiar with the workings of the civil service and got started early. Finance was our most important ministry, and I allowed him to have his pick of government officers. For permanent secretary he chose Hon Sui Sen, my good friend since the days of the Japanese occupation, then commissioner of lands. He was to prove a tower of strength.

It was fortunate we could call on men like Sui Sen. We had so much on our plate, so little time, and such scanty resources. So little time, because I expected at most a year’s honeymoon before the communists reorganised and turned the heat on us. And scanty resources because there was little in the kitty.

Within a few days, Keng Swee reported that the last government had dipped into the reserves and used up $200 million. He foresaw a budget deficit of more than $14 million for 1959. There could be minor savings but they would not exceed $5 million. Ministers should therefore be warned that there was absolutely no way to finance development schemes over and above what had already been allowed for, and even those would have to be ruthlessly pruned. The steps necessary to balance the budget would prove unpopular not only with the public but also with ministers, but it was imperative that we did not end up in the red in our first year of government.

I agreed, and told him that we had better take the unpopular measures early in our term. On 12 June, the newspapers reported that the finance ministry had ordered that no further expenditure was to be incurred without the finance minister’s approval. Among the items likely to be affected were the government’s charitable contributions, advances
to civil servants for buying cars, and disbursements for scholarships, fellowships and training courses abroad. But that would not yield much. Keng Swee proposed that we cut our own ministerial salaries from $2,600 to $2,000 a month to set an example, and also reduce the variable allowances of civil servants. Again, I agreed. We held a meeting of the General Purposes Committee of the Civil Service Joint Council, but the staff side would not accept the proposal because they had no mandate from their unions. We discussed this in cabinet and decided to proceed anyway. The government announced that allowances would be scaled down from 1 July, but that it would receive representations on the subject from staff unions and associations.

It was a significant but not devastating pay cut, and affected only 6,000 of the 14,000 government servants. All personnel drawing $220 a month and above would lose a part of their variable allowances, but only 10 per cent of them would suffer cuts of more than $250 a month, and only a handful the maximum of $400. The 8,000 employees in the lower income brackets would not be touched. We had to take action quickly if we were to set the tone for thrift and financial discipline right from the start. There was great unhappiness, especially among the senior officers. The English-educated believed we had set out to punish them for having voted against us. That was not our motive. We wanted to show everyone in Singapore, especially the Chinese-educated majority, that for the public good, the English-educated were prepared to make sacrifices, led by the ministers. I thought it not unreasonable that they make this sacrifice to help us get the message across that, in this new era, we would all share hardships and joys equally.

There was another good reason for the cuts. Since 1952, I on behalf of the unions, and Keng Swee and Kenny on behalf of the civil servants, had successfully pressed the government for more and more pay and allowances with scant regard for the economic situation. If the unions carried on like that, we would be in trouble. There was no better way
to signal that those days were over. The annual saving would be $12 million. Keng Swee refuted estimates by the newspapers that it would be $20 or $25 million and reminded them that for the remaining six months of 1959 it would thus be only $6 million, reducing the expected deficit from $14 million to $8 million.

A few days later, he announced a freeze on all new appointments, which meant vacancies in government could not be filled without the approval of the minister.

The civil service unions were up in arms. They organised a Council of Joint Action to confront us, just as we had confronted the British colonial government, and to fight for the restoration of full allowances. But we were not a colonial government on the defensive; for the moment at least, the Chinese-speaking majority were solidly behind us, and the council never took off. I was nevertheless exasperated by their reaction. They showed little appreciation of the grave challenges before us, and the fact that we had to prevent the communists from exploiting the grievances of the Chinese-speaking, whose voting strength was now decisive. Some of the senior officers had to give up their maids – too bad, but the country was facing greater hardships and perils, and we had to convince people that this government would govern in the interests of all. Only then would we be able to tackle the lack of a Malayan consciousness among the Chinese, and imbue them with a commitment and loyalty to the country of their adoption; and this was all-important, for they had to change their attitude before the Malay leaders in Kuala Lumpur would agree to merger and enable Singapore to achieve independence as part of Malaya.

When I made my first speech in the Assembly as prime minister on 22 July, I warned, “If the PAP government fails, it will not be the opposition that will be returned to power. They will be fleeing for their lives. Because behind us there is no alternative that is prepared to work the democratic system. In the last analysis, if we fail, brute force returns.” I said that we
therefore needed the civil servants to cooperate with us in order to deliver what we had promised to the people.

“Why should we like to hurt and injure people who must work with us? Under the democratic system, there is a civil service that does the bidding of the party that has the mandate of the people. … If nothing more catastrophic happens than the loss of allowances … government servants should go down on their bended knees and thank God that their souls have been spared.”

Because of history, the English-educated had an important role to play, I said, adding, “They can help us in bridging the gulf between the colonial past and the egalitarian future.” If we failed to close the chasm between the Chinese-speaking and the English-educated elite, the result would be painful. For if the Chinese-educated won power, the English-educated would suddenly become the new dispossessed under a government that would be conducted in Chinese.

From time to time, I continued to berate the English-educated and prod them into changing to meet the future. We – Keng Swee, Chin Chye, Kenny, Raja and I – were English-educated and their natural leaders. We did not want them to be a dying breed; together we must carry at least half of the Chinese-speaking with us if they were not to finish us off. But the English-educated were so depoliticised that they did not understand the danger they were in. Although the cuts were fully restored in 1961, the affected civil servants remained resentful for a long time, and had it not been for the tumultuous events that later overtook us, they would have voted solidly against the PAP in the 1963 election. As it was, the threat from the communists was by then so obvious that they could not but support us.

By the end of the year, we were able to balance the budget, and revenue did not continue to fall, as Keng Swee had feared. If I had to pronounce on it again, I would still agree to the cuts, but only one-third as severe. That would have made the point with the Chinese-speaking,
and although the English-educated government servants would still be unhappy, they would not have been so shaken. The episode, however, had shown up their lack of political understanding and the need to reorient them, to make them aware of the dangers and difficulties ahead. It confirmed the decision Keng Swee, Kenny and I had taken before we took office, to set up a political study centre to teach top-ranking civil servants about the communist threat and our social and economic problems. To be successful, however, we had to win their confidence and convince them they were not simply being brainwashed.

We chose George Thomson to run the centre. Thomson was in his 40s. He had a good mind, was well read, and was an earnest speaker in his strong Scots accent. He had been a lecturer in history, and an effective one because he was full of enthusiasm for whatever he taught. He understood what we wanted and soon grasped the part he had to play. He chose as his assistant Gerald de Cruz, a former communist who had broken away from the MCP because he could not accept their discipline and disagreed with their policies. He had ended up as paid secretary of the Labour Front, working for Marshall and then for Lim Yew Hock.

As finance minister in charge of personnel, Keng Swee took a large colonial government bungalow in Goodwood Hill for the study centre. I opened it on 15 August. Its objects, I said, were:

“not only to stimulate your minds but also to inform you of the acute problems that confront any popularly elected government in a revolutionary situation … Once these problems have been posed to you, you will be better able to help us work out the solutions to them, by making the administration more sensitive and responsive to the needs and mood of the people.”