The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (59 page)

It was just as well that Dr Lee rambled on for so long that he buried several good points in a mountain of trivia. One of the most telling was that Singapore would not get representation in the federal parliament proportionate to its voting numbers. Singapore should have 25–30 seats out of a hundred, he said. I explained that I had asked for 19 seats, but the Tunku was not willing to concede more than 15, the number allotted to the urban centres of Kuala Lumpur and Malacca.

My main difficulty was not with this, or over complete merger, which the people of Singapore did not want. It was with the question of citizenship. Dr Lee described the Federation as taking on three wives in Borneo, while Singapore was not to be a fourth wife, but only a mistress. The children of the mistress were going to be treated as illegitimate with no right to federal citizenship. It struck home. The suspicion that “Malaysian nationals” would not be the same as “Malaysian citizens” caused great unease, and gave the Barisan an ideal issue over which to intensify their campaign of troublemaking on which they were already bent. As I had explained at a press conference on 15 October, while Singapore-born citizens would automatically become federal citizens under complete merger, others – some 327,000 of them, those born in China, India and
even Malaya – would first have to meet federal residence qualifications and would also have to pass a language test in Malay before they could become federal citizens. The difference was that under our agreement with the Tunku, all Singapore citizens would become “federal nationals”. It was the best “special arrangement” I could get from the Tunku.

The communists launched a determined counter-attack despite their basically weak position, moving away from their call for complete merger to stress that people in Singapore would become second-class citizens. Although Keng Swee rebutted Dr Lee Siew Choh on this, pointing out that they would be able to vote for their representatives in the federal parliament and also stand for election, he was alarmed at the effect of this propaganda on our supporters.

After 13 days of tedious and repetitious debate, the vote on 6 December was 33 for (including two UMNO, three SPA and one independent), 18 absent, nil “noes”. The Barisan chose to absent themselves rather than vote against the Heads of Agreement after they had already committed themselves to merger. On 24 January 1962, a second motion was debated to support in principle the plan proposed by the Tunku for the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia comprising the 11 states of Malaya, the states of Singapore and Brunei, and the territories of Sarawak and North Borneo. Voting on 30 January was 35 “ayes” (PAP, UMNO, SPA), 13 “noes” (Barisan), three abstentions and three absent. Ong Eng Guan and Marshall no longer mattered. They had wanted to oppose the motion, but feared they might be treated like the communists if Malaysia came about and the Tunku took charge. So they abstained or absented themselves to avoid a collision with the Tunku.

The debate itself was interrupted by a boycott of examinations by Chinese middle school students. On 29 November, Lee Khoon Choy, parliamentary secretary to the ministry of education and government whip, ran into pickets outside the ministry that prevented him from
attending the Legislative Assembly. Raja immediately introduced a motion for the House to call on the police to ensure that those responsible were dealt with according to the law. When the motion was passed by 43–3 votes, the Barisan got the pickets to disperse quietly. The examination issue had been a running sore since June, when the minister for education had proposed the examination system be made uniform in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil schools. That meant a change for Chinese students. Whereas previously they could fail junior middle school examinations and still go on to senior middle school, we now required them to pass their School Certificate before moving on to take the Higher School Certificate. The pro-communists opposed the new system, and brought matters to a head when 300 of them picketed the examination centres and formed human chains to prevent students from taking their examinations on 27–28 November.

This was part of the general turmoil the communists sought to create. They wanted to get the Chinese school students into the act, as they had done against Lim Yew Hock. But we refused to use the police to break up their pickets. Instead we told parents that if their children missed this examination, they would lose a whole year before they could take it again, and we offered police protection to get them through the pickets. The result was that 60 per cent sat the examinations. The press, including the Chinese newspapers, carried pictures of parents and students escorted by police pushing aside pickets who covered the lower half of their faces with their handkerchiefs, bandit style, to avoid being caught on Special Branch cameras.

I never allowed the communists to exploit Chinese language, education and culture, and in this I gained strength from my children being educated in Chinese. Thus I denied the communists a powerful weapon against me. They could attack my bourgeois middle-class background but could not demonise me as they had Lim Yew Hock, as an enemy who was a destroyer of Chinese culture.

26. Getting to Know the Tunku

The Tunku returned from his trip to London in a happy mood. He was extending his territory. He would take in Singapore on terms that would enable him to maintain his Malay majority and the system of Malay dominance he had established in the Federation. He had got over his deep-seated fears about having to absorb more Chinese.

In mid-December I spent four days in Kuala Lumpur, this time staying with the Tunku at his official residence. I went up alone for tête-à-tête talks – no officials, no ministers, nobody taking notes. That was the way the Tunku felt most comfortable, for he always preferred flexibility when implementing any gentleman’s agreement. After our discussions, I told the press that he would like to have Malaysia formed by August 1962, so that the anniversary would fall on an auspicious day. Eight was his lucky number, so he had chosen 31 August as Malaya’s Independence Day. August was the eighth month, and 31 was three plus one, which made four, or half of eight, the Tunku explained.

I learnt later from his old friend from pre-war student days in Cambridge, Dr Chua Sin Kah, that he liked me to stay at the Residency because he wanted to know the kind of person I was, my personal habits and character. And he had reached the conclusion that I was “not a bad fellow”. I sang in my bath and he approved of my songs, like the lilting Indonesian
Burung Kakaktua
(The Cockatoo), which was then a hit; I played golf and poker; and I drank beer, wine and even took whisky and a little brandy – Three Star Hennessy was the Tunku’s favourite drink. He decided I was not a dangerous communist. Indeed I was very human and an agreeable companion – young, a little too smart for his liking, and always too full of ideas, but otherwise all right. I got on with him.
One great advantage was that I could speak Malay and I was completely at home talking to his wife, Puan Sharifah Rodziah, an Arab-Malay woman affectionately called Engku Pah, who was also from Kedah, the Tunku’s home state. To add to the impression that I was of sound background, Choo also spoke good Malay. This proved to him that we were Malayans at heart and not Chinese chauvinists.

To negotiate with the Tunku required a special temperament. He did not like to sit down and join issue face-to-face after having read his files. He preferred to leave all tedious details to his deputy, Razak – a capable, hardworking and meticulous man – and to confine himself to making the big decisions and settling the direction of events. Every time we ran into a roadblock with Malayan officials over some matter and could not get the relevant minister or Razak to overrule them, I had to go to the Tunku. This meant getting a word in between long sessions of desultory talk about the world, social gossip and lunches for which he often personally cooked the roast mutton or roast beef – he enjoyed cooking and was good at it. After lunch, he would invariably take a nap, and with time on my hands I would go off to the Royal Selangor Golf Club practice tee to hit 100 to 200 balls while I waited for him to get up. At about 4:30 we would play nine holes of golf, and in between shots or before dinner, when he was in the right mood, I would put the question to him. In this way, one item might involve four days of eating, drinking, golfing, and going with him to dinner parties or weddings. On several occasions I accompanied him to Penang or Ipoh or the Cameron Highlands, waiting for a propitious moment.

He possessed an equable temperament, and almost always appeared serene and tranquil; but he could become quite agitated when he sensed danger. He told me that he would never allow anyone to hustle him into a decision, because when he was not calm and relaxed he could make bad mistakes. If he were pressed, he would postpone making up his mind. But I soon learnt that once he had done so, he never looked back.

The high commissioners who did well in Kuala Lumpur were those who realised this, especially Australia’s Tom Critchley and Britain’s Geofroy Tory. They humoured the old boy, played golf and poker with him. Critchley might lose a few hundred dollars to him at poker over the months – not big money, but not tiddlywinks either. The Tunku liked winning, or rather did not like losing. It was part of his royal upbringing. I did not mind, as my purpose was to get points of agreement clarified between us; but I robbed him of the sense of satisfaction that comes from winning because my mind was not on it. Once, when I had lost a couple of hundred dollars after taking a third telephone call from Singapore, he said, “Kuan Yew, keep your mind on the game. I don’t like winning from you when your mind is not on the game. The work can wait till tomorrow.” I laughed, remembering the London talks in 1956 and Lennox-Boyd writing a reply to a cable while listening to David Marshall. “Tunku,” I said, “when I went to the telephone, I knew that your bid was $15, I suspected you had three kings, and I did not have enough cards to meet you, so I had to throw my hand in.” He was not mollified. He wanted to win only after I had tried my best.

It was different at golf. The Tunku had a 24 handicap and played to 24; mine was 12 (later unfairly reduced to nine) but I actually played to 15. And he would have a strong partner. So it was difficult for me to beat him. Nevertheless, on one memorable occasion my partner and I trounced him by eight holes with seven to play. He was not pleased. Moore, who was at the Royal Selangor Golf Club at the time, took me to task for being tactless.

His friends also humoured him. When his horse was beaten at the races, one of them would often fish some tickets from his pocket and say, “Tunku, I bought these tickets for you. I knew you wouldn’t bet on this horse when your horse was running, but I knew it was going to win so I bought them for you.” The Tunku would go home a winner by a few hundred dollars in spite of his horse losing. It made his day.

He was a nice man. But he was a prince who understood power and knew how to use it. He did not carry a big stick, but he had many hatchet-bearers who would do the job for him while he looked the other way and appeared as benign as ever. If he distrusted a man, that man was finished with him. But if he trusted you and you did not let him down, he would – in the royal tradition – always find some way of helping a loyal follower, as he did with Lim Yew Hock. When Lim was out of office, the Tunku made him high commissioner to Australia. When he disgraced himself there by getting lost in a striptease nightclub for a few days, provoking a police search for him, and had to resign, the Tunku got him another job in an Islamic organisation in Jeddah (Lim had become a convert to Islam). It was his way of helping a friend in trouble.

And, fortunately, he viewed my parlous position in Singapore with sympathy. There was never a lull in the communist attacks on us. We had chronic industrial unrest, though there were no riots or clashes between workers and police. On 11 January 1962, the opposition in the Dewan Rakyat, the House of Representatives in Kuala Lumpur, put a barbed question to the Tunku as to what would happen after merger since Singapore trade union leaders, unlike their Malayan counterparts, seemed to “flourish in trouble”. The Tunku replied that Singapore had more strikes in one month than Malaya had in three years, but he would try to reduce the number and increase the amount of happiness of the people there, adding laughingly, “I don’t know how we will do it but our minister for internal security says he will do it. The whole country is with him.”