The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (60 page)

This was a double-edged sword. It was helpful in that it showed waverers in Singapore that the Tunku was confident merger was coming and that after merger he would deal with the communists through Ismail; but it was unhelpful because it spurred the Barisan to more desperate action to stop it. However, the Barisan did not return to violence. It placed its hopes on getting the Chinese-speaking electorate
to vote against merger in any form by working on their fears over “second-class citizenship”.

To address the issue, the traditional leaders of the Chinese-speaking community (including those of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce) had proposed that I talk to their members. I agreed, and on 13 January, I met over a thousand delegates from 400 guilds, associations and unions at the Victoria Memorial Hall. The chair was taken by the president of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a successful rubber trader of 51 called Ko Teck Kin who, like most of his colleagues other than Tan Lark Sye, was apprehensive of the communists. He had an economic stake in Malaya, where the rubber came from, and he was not going to side with the communists. After I got to know him better, I found him a sensible, reasonable man, deeply concerned about the future of the Chinese community in Singapore whose interests he felt it was his duty to protect.

I spent three hours answering questions. The audience was not hostile. The majority were practical businessmen. The communists had not been able to pack the meeting and could not dominate it. My answers to several questions drew laughter from the crowd. And when I rounded up the meeting with an account of the historical development of the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, and of how the clan associations had played a key role in the welfare of the Chinese immigrants, they responded warmly and I sat down to applause.

As I expected, the first question concerned citizenship. This was natural. As one key member of the chamber reminded the audience, they had fought hard for Singapore citizenship, multilingualism and equal treatment for all streams of education. They were therefore anxious to know how these would be affected by merger. I told them that if we sought complete merger as proposed by the Barisan, some 330,000 Singapore citizens would lose all citizenship rights. But Lam Tian, my old opponent in the 1955 general election, later came back to query our
alternative. Why couldn’t all 600,000 Singapore citizens enjoy the same rights after joining Malaysia under the terms we had agreed with the Tunku? I explained that the rights of all Malaysian nationals, whether Singapore citizens or federal citizens, would be the same, except that Singapore citizens would vote in Singapore for their representatives in the federal parliament, and federal citizens would vote in the Federation. (In fact, the Tunku’s object was to exclude Singapore citizens from voting elsewhere in Malaysia.) But the nagging question in the minds of the Chinese-speaking remained – if there was no difference between them, why did the Tunku not agree to use the more familiar term “citizen” instead of “national”?

That distinction was my problem, and my job had not been made easier when the third meeting of the Malaysia Solidarity Consultative Committee issued a statement a few days earlier saying that the special position of the Malays in the Federation would be shared by the indigenous people of the Borneo territories; they would thus automatically become “founder citizens” of Malaysia by operation of law. This emphasised the superior status of “citizens” over the “nationals” in Singapore.

When I met Sir John Martin, another permanent undersecretary at the Colonial Office, with Ian Wallace and Philip Moore at Sri Temasek on 16 January 1962 to discuss Malaysia, they thought that the general opinion in the North Borneo territories ran contrary to the confident assumptions of the Malaysia Solidarity Consultative Committee. Martin and Wallace had been to Borneo and found hesitation on almost all sides. The unsophisticated upriver people knew little of the implications and needed time to think about it. The Chinese were distrustful because they knew it was Malayan government policy to keep them in their place. In Brunei, Azahari, the leader of Partai Rakyat who had considerable support among young Malays, was firmly opposed to joining Malaysia, and was calling for an independent federation of the three Borneo territories. The Sultan of Brunei wanted to know what advantages there
were in it for him, and had to be reassured that he could seek special terms in direct negotiations with the Malayan government.

I said that these hesitations of the people who had confided in them should not be taken too seriously. The leaders in the Borneo territories respected authority. Once they saw the Tunku as the ultimate source of power in the Federation, they would accommodate themselves to it. What was important was that the British should give a strong lead and have them understand Britain’s support for Malaysia was firm and settled.

Martin concluded that the people of Borneo would come to accept the plan provided the Tunku was wise enough to grant them reasonable safeguards, but more time was needed for preparation to ensure that the administration did not collapse after sovereignty was transferred. I emphasised that we had to keep up the momentum. The Tunku wanted Malaysia by August 1962. I wanted to accomplish merger as soon as possible and so dilute the communist threat in the larger population of Malaysia.

I told them that we had to make haste. The Barisan had made a tactical blunder when they declared themselves in favour of complete merger, and once they knew they could not win, they might decide to launch a campaign of widespread disorders rather than accept Malaysia and their removal from the scene. They might want to go down fighting.

The Barisan’s potential for stirring up trouble had not decreased. I was therefore eager to get things moving, and through my impatience and my very different temperament made the Tunku angry with me. I had not been sensitive enough to realise that once he decided to take Singapore into the Federation, his attitude towards me would undergo a subtle change. He was a prince of the royal house of Kedah. Hierarchy was part of his nature. As long as Singapore was outside his domain, he treated me as the leader of a friendly neighbouring country, a lesser leader to whom he was willing to be courteous. But now, I was going to be part of his Federation, and he was accustomed to having courtiers
and retainers around him, followers who were faithful and humble. Lim Yew Hock was one of them, and I had been unkind to Lim when he introduced a motion in the Assembly in March to express grave concern at the mounting industrial unrest in Singapore. In the exchange that followed, I had knocked him about roughly, pointing out the differences between his handling of labour disputes in 1955–56 and the way we were dealing with them.

Then Keng Swee aroused anger by announcing that the Singapore government would award equal pay to men and women in the civil service forthwith. Tan Siew Sin, the finance minister of the federal government, was very annoyed and passed his annoyance on to the Tunku. He believed that this change would have financial and social implications for Malaya, since their women employees would demand equal pay.

The last straw was when I told the Tunku that I was planning a tour of Delhi, Cairo, Belgrade, London, Moscow and Beijing. He was appalled. I was on a dangerous course, associating with the enemy. I was giving the impression that the Russian and Chinese leaders were great men when in fact they were “evil fellows” out to destroy the stability of Malaya. He could not understand my reasoning, that after I had visited these countries and been received by them, I would be better qualified to tell the people I was more convinced than ever that the communist system was unsuitable for Singapore and Malaya. That was not the Tunku’s approach. I was going to be part of his scheme of things and he did not want anybody in Malaysia to fraternise with the enemy. He was angered by my arguing with him over it, and I finally concluded it was not worth my while to clash with him on the issue.

His irritation showed. On March 25, in Singapore, he opened up on the extremists who looked upon the island as “Little China”, opposed merger, and had broken away from the PAP to fight it. If they wanted to create trouble and bloodshed, it would be better not to have merger at all, he said, but in that case he would close the Causeway for Malaya’s
own safety. On the other hand, he added, extremist groups had nothing to fear after merger as long as they respected the law and worked within the federal constitution – there were already more of them in Malaya than there were in Singapore.

That was typical of him. He had said in the House of Representatives in Kuala Lumpur that his minister for internal security would deal with the communists. Now he said they would be all right if they worked within the constitution. Yet it was obvious he wanted them dealt with. He often indulged in such equivocation. It was the Tunku speaking his mind – not necessarily logical and tight in his presentation but leaving his listeners in no doubt where he stood. However, his intervention this time was more of a help than a hindrance. He had underlined the vulnerability of Singapore, and his determination to have merger. Only two days later, he spoke at a dinner given by Ko Teck Kin, and this time he really let his hair down. “A complete break between Singapore and Malaya might mean war and bloodshed with devastating effect on the people,” he said. “War would result if an isolated Singapore sought solace in the company of powers unfriendly to the Federation (meaning China).”

Selkirk reported back to London:

“I feel that the rather hysterical and hectoring note will do harm and will raise the temperature in Singapore politics at a time when we are trying to ease Singapore quietly and inevitably into merger. Threats of closing the Causeway and of war between Singapore and the Federation are futile and will only help the Barisan Sosialis to excite communal feeling against the Malays. … Perhaps, however, what is more important than the effect on Singapore is the indication of the confused state of the Tunku’s thinking. He is clearly puzzled and hurt that his offer of Malaysia has not been welcomed with open arms in both Borneo and Singapore, and part of him is no doubt already regretting the whole enterprise. Nevertheless, I believe he still intends to go ahead with Malaysia and probably the more extreme passages of his speeches should not be taken too seriously.”

Selkirk was wrong about the effect of the Tunku’s words. They made a considerable impact on the Barisan leaders who realised the Tunku meant business and had now entered the fray. He had painted a bleak picture of the outcome for Singapore if there were no Malaysia. Lim Chin Siong was alarmed enough to write to the Tunku pledging his party’s support for merger and Malaysia. The letter was handed over quietly at Federation House in Singapore, but the Tunku leaked the fact through one of his secretaries and the
Straits Times
carried the headline: “Mystery letter. It was from Lim.” Pressed by journalists, Lim Chin Siong confirmed that he had written it and said he was grateful to the Tunku for sending him a very courteous reply. Asked what it was about, he declined to answer.

Taunted with dark conjectures voiced by Chin Chye – was it a secret sell-out? – Dr Lee Siew Choh finally produced the letter and the Tunku’s reply on 11 July. Lim Chin Siong had written that he thought much of the Tunku’s unhappy feelings about Singapore had arisen from a lack of opportunities for free and frank discussion of the “apparently divergent attitudes” between them, which could contribute a great deal towards understanding and national unity. The Tunku in his reply welcomed Lim’s assurance that he was completely at one with him on the desire for national unity. He had to leave Singapore the next day, but would be happy to meet him at some future date, and would let Lim know when this could be arranged. But the Tunku, who knew that the “apparently divergent attitudes” were irreconcilable, had offered no date.

Lim Chin Siong had made a serious mistake. Writing the letter and not making it public in the first place was seen by the Chinese-speaking as weakness, an admission that he was in a vulnerable position and wanted to make peace with the Tunku. The letter was a giveaway with nothing gained in return. It implicitly acknowledged that the Tunku was the person most likely to be in control from now on, not Lim Chin Siong and the communists, and I knew the Chinese would take this into
account when making their choices in the future. All the Barisan could do in the meanwhile was to keep their cadres busy in order to maintain their morale and stop them from thinking about the hopelessness of their position. Accordingly, Dr Lee announced that 1,500 of them would be out the following Sunday – and every Sunday for six weeks afterwards – on a house-to-house campaign to reject the government white paper on merger.

A week after the Tunku’s visit, Tan Siew Sin visited Singapore to open a sub-branch of the MCA, of which he had just become president. He sounded even tougher than the Tunku. Singapore had become the problem child of Malaya, he said. But if there were no merger, it might not be necessary to close the Causeway because Singapore’s economy was so vulnerable. A short and simple customs order levying an additional cess on rubber exports would reduce the largest rubber market in the world to a tropical slum. An island smaller than Malaya’s hill station, the Cameron Highlands, could not go it alone. He added that the Malayan government was not completely dominated by the Malays and it was not true that the Chinese did not get a square deal. He would not be a member of a government which he felt was hostile to the legitimate interests of the Malayan Chinese.