The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (63 page)

The British were still in charge of our foreign affairs and an officer from their mission to the United Nations met us at the airport. They were first-rate professionals. They knew every procedural move that had to be taken, and piloted me to the right people for preliminary talks. They advised me not to present any long or protracted argument to the committee but to go back to the position earlier taken by the Indian delegate that there was an elected government in Singapore and the committee should not concern itself with what it decided.

At the hearing, I handed in the memorandum giving our rebuttal to the opposition’s charges that the referendum terms denied the people the right of democratic dissent, and in the course of two hours elaborated on every point. They had been guilty of misrepresentation in seeking UN intervention, I said. Their appeal was part of a false alarm designed to maintain an atmosphere of emergency in Singapore in order to boost the flagging morale of their supporters, who saw merger advancing relentlessly upon them. They had also been guilty of seeking to retain colonialism in Singapore for their own purposes, and had petitioned against the duly elected and constitutional government, which wanted immediate independence. It was a paradox. The explanation was that when Singapore joined the Federation, the communist struggle would no longer be against the British colonialists, but against a popularly elected government that had already won independence for the country. Meanwhile, we had a complete mandate to carry out merger without a referendum at all.

After my submissions, Dr Lee Siew Choh made his, and I then requested and was given the right of reply. It was ironical, I said, that
both opposition spokesmen, Dr Lee and Woodhull, had been born in Malaya, not in Singapore, and that Woodhull as a Malayan citizen had travelled to New York on a Malayan passport. Furthermore, they did not represent the majority, because when they had challenged the government on a motion of no confidence, they were able to obtain the votes of only 16 out of the 51 Members of the Assembly. Keng Swee and I were both tired from our journey, but we were determined to establish our nationalist credentials as Afro-Asians. By our demeanour, our tone of voice, our gestures and the emphatic way in which we dealt with all questions, we made sure the committee could not mistake us for stooges of the British or the Malays. Sir Hugh Foot, the British permanent representative to the United Nations, was delighted with our efforts. He said the members of the committee were left in no doubt that the PAP was a vigorous outfit with a fighting prime minister, and not by any stretch of the imagination a puppet of the United Kingdom.

We left that very night for London. There was little time to lose. The Tunku was concluding his talks with Macmillan and it was time to press him in the presence of the British to settle the question of citizenship. So I did not stay in New York to hear Marshall make his representations. He made an impassioned plea and evoked a better response from the committee than Dr Lee, but he was unable to remove the deeper impression I had left on its members. The committee decided not to take any action on the petition.

We reached Heathrow Airport on Friday, 27 July, at 11:15 am. Keng Swee and I were exhausted after flying eastwards into the sun all the way from Singapore via New York, but there was no time to rest. After a quick wash at the Hyde Park Hotel, where we were staying, we went down to the dining room in time to have lunch with Selkirk. He briefed us on the progress of the talks with the Tunku on the Borneo territories, and by
3 pm we were seeing Duncan Sandys at the Commonwealth Relations Office. However tired we were, we had to carry on.

The next day, Keng Swee, Stanley Stewart (my permanent secretary) and I had tea with the Tunku at the Ritz Hotel. As usual with the Tunku, we did not discuss the subject of citizenship directly. But he was in a relaxed mood. He had finally settled nearly all outstanding issues with the British over Borneo. The signs were good. On Sunday morning, Keng Swee and I played golf with him and Razak at Swindon, and that afternoon, while the Tunku was resting, Razak represented him at a meeting with Duncan Sandys at the Commonwealth Relations Office, where we discussed the unresolved questions of Malaysian citizenship, the detention of the communists and the plan for a common market. I did not know whether Macmillan had had a quiet word with the Tunku, but Sandys put it bluntly to Razak that these issues had to be settled before the British would sign the agreement on the Borneo territories. Razak conceded Malaysian citizenship in principle, subject to the Tunku’s endorsement. It was a great step forward.

I still had worries. Without the British to persuade the Tunku, I would not have got this agreement, and I feared that once Malaysia came into being they would not be able to intervene further on Singapore’s behalf. Meanwhile, we had still not established a really sound working relationship with the Tunku and Razak. They had totally different personalities. Razak was always filled with doubts and hesitations, always having second thoughts. He would agree on some item after long debate and discussions, only to ring me up the next day or the day after to revise his decision. He fretted and worried over details, and was a good deputy for the Tunku, who never bothered about them. He was a hard worker, and had finished his Bar examinations, both intermediate and the finals, in a record time of 18 months. He spent time building up a network of friends and supporters among the Malay students in England, including the sons of the nine Malay sultans. But although he himself came from
a family of traditional chieftains, he did not have the Tunku’s naturally gracious ways, and dealing with him was always more of a strain.

At 10 am on Monday, 30 July, Keng Swee and I went to a formal meeting with the Tunku and Razak at the Ritz and stayed on for lunch. The Tunku duly endorsed what Razak had agreed. I said I would send him a letter setting this out and asked him to confirm what I had written. After lunch, I went back to the Hyde Park Hotel and produced the final draft, of which the key passage read:

“Some persons find it difficult to understand that there is no difference in calling Singapore citizens ‘nationals’ or ‘citizens’ of the new Federation of Malaysia. We have, therefore, agreed that, since this question of nomenclature has loomed large in the minds of some sections of the people, paragraph 14 of the white paper should be amended so that citizens of Singapore will be citizens of Malaysia instead of nationals of Malaysia.”

I attached a joint statement of the Malayan attorney-general and the Singapore state advocate-general confirming the constitutional position in regard to voting rights, which was that our people would vote only in Singapore, and that this would remain unchanged.

The Tunku replied in a letter the following day, with the Ritz Hotel, London, as his address:

“I confirm that the arrangements for citizenship of the inhabitants of Singapore will be in the form agreed between the governments of the Federation of Malaya and Singapore set out in paragraph 14 of Singapore White Paper Command 33 of 1961, as amended in regard to nomenclature and franchise in the terms of the statement.”

This was what I needed. Had the communists not made such an issue of it, they would not have made it so easy for me to turn the tables on them. Now they would have few real grievances left and I was not going to give them much time before the referendum to create new ones to exploit. To this day, I have not discovered how the British – maybe
with the help of the Australians – finally persuaded the Tunku to change his mind. Probably Sandys, who could be very firm in negotiations, had told him that if there was no common citizenship, there would be no Borneo territories for him, and no merger. That evening at seven, Sandys held a final meeting with the Tunku, Razak, Keng Swee and me to wrap things up. I asked for the agreement on citizenship not to be published, so that I would have a chance to make a dramatic pronouncement in Singapore at an appropriate time.

There remained the problem of the communists. I had learnt from Selkirk on arrival in London that the Tunku was still insisting that all the troublemakers should be detained before Singapore became a Federation responsibility. But he had repeated that the British were unenthusiastic about taking action against them and would rather that the operation were mounted by the Malaysian government after merger. I was greatly relieved. Now the British could carry the burden of opposing the Tunku. I then adjusted my position to make it clear that once the referendum had been successfully concluded, I would be prepared to support the idea of a clean-up before the inauguration of Malaysia.

But Selkirk had written to Sandys on 27 July :

“I must leave you in no doubt how dangerous I think this policy is for the following reasons:

“(i)  Arbitrary arrest without convincing public proof must strengthen the opposition in Singapore and disturb Lee’s colleagues, possibly causing him to fall.

“(ii)  It would become abundantly clear that Malaysia was being imposed by the British, regardless of the will of the people concerned. It will then be presented as our plan for preserving our bases with the Tunku allowing himself to be used as our stooge.

“(iii) It will be very difficult to defend action of this character in parliament here or in the United Nations, where the Russians are known to be working hard against Malaysia.

“Nor has any solid argument been advanced why such action as may be necessary for security could not be taken by the Malaysian government after the formation of Malaysia.”

What Selkirk left unsaid was that there might be riots and bloodshed, which would bring political odium on the British. Sandys stressed that he could not agree in advance, even in principle, to a series of arrests in Singapore without having had an opportunity to consider the cases of the individuals concerned. A reasonable case must be presented, and it was not for the British government to initiate the matter. But if all concerned showed that they were prepared to take their share of responsibility, the British government would not shirk theirs, and would not let the others down. The Tunku had to settle for this for the time being.

The Tunku often talked openly of his lucky numbers, lucky colours and dreams. He took such otherworldly influences seriously. In London, he had a pleasant dream associated with the animals of the zodiac. This, he said, was auspicious. As the Malaysia Agreement was to be signed on 1 August, his lucky day, he went to a jeweller’s near Burlington Arcade to order a gold ring with the symbols of the zodiac on it for the occasion. When he took delivery, however, he was dismayed to discover that it was inscribed with some strange symbols, not those of the zodiac he was familiar with such as the ram, bull, Gemini twins, crab and so on. Keng Swee came to the rescue, assuring him that the symbols represented them, otherwise the ring would have been sent back for alteration and might not then have been ready before the signing ceremony. Such incidents relieved the tedium of being a courtier in the Tunku’s court at the Ritz.

The Tunku was nevertheless a liberal-minded Western-educated Muslim of the pre-war generation. He was a bon vivant and was completely open about it. Like other Muslims of his generation in Britain he ate freely, drank liberally and loved horses and women. He was once cited as co-respondent in a divorce suit in England brought by a Eurasian
lawyer with whose English wife he had committed adultery. The case, well-publicised in Malaya before he became chief minister in 1955, only increased his popular support. Malay kampong folk admired his prowess. After his retirement from politics in 1970, the Tunku became a devout Muslim, devoting his energies to the furtherance of pan-Islamic unity as secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

The Tunku was altogether a most agreeable dinner companion, full of little stories, often told at his own expense in a most charming manner. His object in life was happiness, and the yardstick by which he measured any situation was whether it made him happy or unhappy. When everything was going fine, he would proudly say, “I am the happiest prime minister in the world.” He would add that his aim for Malaya was not wealth, greatness or grandeur, but happiness in a land without hatreds or troubles, and when seeking to reassure the Borneo peoples of their position in the Federation, he told the press that this aim would now be extended to the whole of Malaysia. But it did not go down well with the people of Borneo and Singapore, who were not used to measuring their well-being in that way.

He had no pretensions about his own abilities and no inhibitions in describing the capabilities of his fellow Malays. He was disarmingly frank in his self-deprecation, confessing that his Malay father, the sultan, was a weak man and that his strength came from his Thai mother. The Malays, he said, were not very clever or demanding, and therefore easy to please. All he needed was to give them a little bit more and they were quite happy. These views were similar to those expressed by Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his book
The Malay Dilemma
, published in 1971. He wrote, “Whatever the Malays could do the Chinese could do better and more cheaply”, and “they resulted from two entirely different sets of hereditary and environmental influences”. Years later, in 1997, when he was Malaysian prime minister, Dr Mahathir said he had reversed his stand and no longer believed what he wrote in
The Malay Dilemma
.