The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (62 page)

I returned to Singapore feeling the better for five weeks away from the daily grind of public argument and the pressure of industrial unrest. My spirits were sufficiently restored to return to the ceaseless ding-dong with the communists, exchanging vitriol with them in the press and exercising restraint in the face of provocation by their strikes, go-slows and sit-downs while business suffered, jobs were lost and unemployment increased.

Things had not gone too badly. In May, some 3,000 students had gathered at Chung Cheng High School to commemorate the anniversary of the clashes with the police in 1954. They sang songs, condemned the government for setting up a commission of inquiry to investigate the boycott of the secondary four examinations and called for a one-day boycott of classes in all Chinese middle schools on 21 May, the day the commission was to start. But on the day itself, there was 100 per cent attendance at 19 of the 25 morning schools. One hundred students were picked up plastering walls, lamp-posts and traffic signs with protest posters, but at 5 am, when it was still dark. They were not anxious to be noticed and photographed.

And despite the Barisan’s canvassing every Sunday, the ground had not turned sour on us.

27. A Vote for Merger

On the question of citizenship though, the Barisan was gaining ground. Its suggestion that Singaporeans would be “second-class citizens” in Malaysia struck a chord and aroused alarm. I was determined to tackle the question head-on. So on 3 June 1962, the third anniversary of Singapore State Day, I spoke at the Padang to a few thousand people gathered there to watch a march past of military detachments, civilian groups and schoolchildren, and cultural displays. I assured them that before Malaysia was implemented, I would make it clear in the constitution that Singapore citizens would be equal to all others in the Federation.

Lim Chin Siong retorted that my pledge was an admission that there was in fact no equality for them under the proposed merger and Malaysia arrangements. The Barisan had narrowed the issue down to this one problem, and I was convinced that if I could get the Tunku to change the term “Malaysian nationals” to “Malaysian citizens”, it would be solved. I was determined to achieve this, and then hold a referendum as soon as possible before the Barisan could work up dissatisfaction and discontent over some other spurious objection. But I had no leverage with the Tunku, only the British had, since the Tunku wanted the Borneo territories and also needed their assistance to defend Malaya; I had to get them to exercise it. Moore agreed that we had a legitimate grievance, and I knew he would do his best to get his ministers in London to persuade the Tunku to change his mind on citizenship. But we disagreed about another equally important matter – the referendum.

Moore was worried because the Referendum Bill, which had already gone through a select committee, had recommended that since the submission of blank ballot papers would indicate that the voters
concerned did not wish to exercise their right to decide for or against merger themselves, the decision would be taken by the majority in the Assembly (meaning the PAP). I had inserted this provision to counter any communist call for a blank vote. But if people wanted to protest by casting blank votes in large numbers and in that way express their opposition to merger and the referendum, Moore thought I had to give them their choice. He tried to dissuade me from going on with the operation, saying people had labelled it dishonest and phoney. I disagreed. In a report he sent to the secretary of state on 21 June, as acting commissioner, he wrote:

“In answer to our repeated suggestions over the last six months that he should not hold a referendum, he has always said that he must do so to avoid being labelled as the man who sold the Singapore Chinese to the Malays. … It seems therefore that he will have to go ahead with the referendum on his terms, which have been carefully calculated to ensure that he does not lose. Probably the only serious risk now is that there will be a large-scale boycott of the referendum.”

He was right about one thing: I remained determined that there should be a referendum, and my immediate task was to get the bill through the Assembly. Once the Cobbold Commission report was published, I would have to decide what alternatives to put to the people. There had been endless public discussion in the press, over the radio and in forums at the University of Malaya, and although the debate on the Referendum Bill itself lasted from 27 June to 11 July, with eight midnight sessions, the speeches were heated and repetitious because there were no new arguments, only increasingly vehement reassertions of the respective positions of the opposing sides. An amendment on the key issue was moved by Dr Lee Siew Choh and supported by David Marshall and Ong Eng Guan to propose that only one question should be posed in the referendum – “yes” or “no” to merger. Then Lim Yew Hock intervened
to propose that three questions be posed: Do you want merger (A) in accordance with the white paper, or (B) on the basis of Singapore as a constituent state of the Federation of Malaya, or (C) on terms no less favourable than those given to the three Borneo territories? Dr Lee’s amendment was defeated and Lim Yew Hock’s accepted. I was delighted that Lim had proposed what I had planned to do.

During the debate, every Member of the Assembly received a thinly veiled threatening letter, signed by 39 old boys’ associations and university students’ clubs led by the Nanyang University Guild of Graduates, telling them to vote for the Barisan proposal – or else. On 29 June, speaking on the supplementary estimates to raise more than a million dollars for a second battalion of the Singapore Infantry Regiment, I warned the Barisan that should wild talk lead to wild action, then the wild men would be put away. If the rules were cast aside for stones and iron bars, then the overriding interests of peace, security and the well-being of the people would require the use of force to suppress force. I felt no qualms about using the Singapore Infantry Regiment against the communists: there was no danger of my being dubbed a colonial stooge. But to encourage them to be on their best behaviour, I assured Dr Lee that no troops would be used as long as they kept to the rules.

On the afternoon of 3 July 1962, PAP assemblywoman Hoe Puay Choo sent me a letter resigning from the party on the grounds that she had not been consulted on important policy decisions. The communists had been hard at work on her and had got her to switch at this, the last moment. The PAP now had 25 Members against the combined opposition’s 26. We had become a minority government. I asked Moore to meet Chin Chye, Keng Swee and me. If the PAP had to throw in its hand, Keng Swee asked him, would the British see merger through after we had resigned? Moore thought it would be very difficult, as there would then be no elected government to support it. He urged me to see it through if it was at all possible. I said I would, but asked him to tell London that
time was now extremely short. We had to battle on in the Assembly for another eight days of debate before the vote was taken. We carried the motion by 29 votes to 17 – 24 PAP, three UMNO and two SPA against 13 Barisan, one Workers’ Party (David Marshall), and three UPP (Ong Eng Guan). Hoe Puay Choo absented herself. We had got the bill through with the support of Lim Yew Hock’s SPA and the Tunku’s UMNO.

A month earlier, Moore had given me sight of the final draft of the Cobbold report to test my reaction. I was most concerned by its recommendations. “There is no reason for a separate citizenship for the Borneo territories,” it said, and set out terms that would include a waiver for a limited period of the language test in respect of persons above a certain age. Thus all those born in the territories could qualify for Malaysian citizenship. This was a disaster. My position would become totally untenable and the referendum would fail. There would be large-scale abstentions or blank votes.

The report had, however, given me one opening. Immediately after the referendum debate, I wrote to Maudling to point out that Singapore citizens could become Malaysian citizens without creating any problems, because the Cobbold Commission had also recommended that electoral rights should only be exercised in the territories where the citizens were normally resident. In other words, Borneo citizens would vote in Borneo and Singapore citizens would vote in Singapore, so the Tunku need not fear being swamped by Chinese from Singapore casting their ballots in Malaya. I then wrote to the Tunku on 12 July, to send him a copy of this letter and to suggest that the solution to the problem was to use similar terms for Borneo and for Singapore, without in any way altering the content of what we had already agreed about limiting voting rights.

I attached an
aide-mémoire
for both him and Sandys, which stated that the main thrust of the attack against the white paper by the communists was that it was anti-Chinese: because the island was 70 per cent Chinese, the Tunku was not prepared to offer Singapore what he was
prepared to offer the Borneo territories, which were 70 per cent non-Chinese. This could only be disproved by offering Singapore the supposedly better Borneo terms. I had given the British notice that if they did not press the Tunku to grant us equal citizenship, I would not be able to get merger through the Assembly. What I did not say – and it was something on the minds of Chin Chye, Keng Swee, Raja and myself – was that in that case, we would not even want to go through with it. The Tunku and the British would then have to take the consequences.

Immediately after the Referendum Bill was passed, Dr Lee Siew Choh tabled a motion of no confidence in the government. To this, Lim Yew Hock moved an amendment condemning the government for “not restraining known communists and communist front leaders from manipulating and controlling organisations like the Barisan Sosialis”. He waxed eloquent and unburdened himself. It was his chance to show how he had sacrificed everything in order to deal with the communists in 1956–57. Had he known that the prime minister had consorted with the so-called “Plen”, he would have sent him to keep Lim Chin Siong company (in Changi Prison). The Barisan wanted to wreck the referendum and merger by this no-confidence motion but Lim Yew Hock would not make common cause with them.

People were becoming less afraid of the all-powerful communists as they realised how vulnerable they were, that it would be the Malayans, not the colonial British, who would soon deal with them. Lim Yew Hock’s amendment was defeated as was the original no-confidence motion. After the Barisan had lost the fight on the Referendum Bill and the motion of no confidence, the Tunku left for London in mid-July to finalise the terms with the British over the Borneo territories. Time was running out and the communists searched desperately for some way to prevent merger.

Two days after they lost the debate, a group of 19 assemblymen led by the Barisan Sosialis sent an appeal to the United Nations
Decolonisation Committee, objecting to the way the questions to be put in the referendum were formulated. Only two of the 17 members of the committee were from the communist bloc; the majority were Afro-Asians, most of whose governments had representatives in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and knew what was going on. As there was nothing to be gained by dodging it, I cabled UN Acting Secretary-General U Thant that the opposition’s petition was part of the play of domestic party politics in Singapore, and that if the committee considered the petition, it must hear the government first. I was prepared to lay before it the facts of the situation, which could stand the closest scrutiny.

At first the Indian representative staunchly supported us, in keeping with the view Nehru had expressed in Delhi in April that year, that there was no alternative to Malaysia. Together with Cambodia, Tunisia and other Afro-Asians, he said that since Singapore had a freely elected government, its actions could not come under review by the committee. Then he unexpectedly changed his mind, perhaps because of my willingness to participate. The following day, the UN said the committee, which had earlier voted 10–2 to take no action, had decided it would meet a delegation from the Singapore assemblymen who were petitioning against the referendum and had asked for a UN observer. Dr Lee Siew Choh was jubilant. But I was not unhappy with the outcome; I was confident I could demolish the arguments of the Barisan and Marshall, and on 20 July I made a formal request to the committee to appear before it.

Two days later, Keng Swee and I took off for New York with my personal assistant, Teo Yik Kwee. I wanted to get in the first word with the committee, then leave for London to join the Tunku and Macmillan after they had finished their discussions on the Borneo territories. Our plane was a Superconstellation, a four-engined turboprop and the main intercontinental aircraft then in service. It took nearly two days to fly us from Singapore to New York via Saigon, Guam, Hawaii and Los Angeles. Keng Swee and I worked throughout that flight, preparing a point-by-point
rebuttal of the long 19-point memorandum that Marshall had helped the Barisan to draft. Once my bags were unpacked in our Manhattan hotel, I looked for Teo. I found him flat on his back on his bed, fast asleep, fully clothed with his shoes on, totally exhausted. He had been typing endless drafts and redrafts for Keng Swee and me for almost 48 hours.