The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (70 page)

Before my visits, government officers accompanied by the assemblyman of the constituency (or if it was an opposition constituency, by PAP assemblymen from others) moved in to mobilise the shopkeepers, the community leaders and leaders of all the various local associations, and help them draw up a programme. They would then welcome me to the constituency to discuss their problems and needs with me. I travelled in an open Land Rover, and with a microphone in my hand and loudspeakers fixed to the vehicle, spoke to the crowds that would have gathered and be waiting for me when I made scheduled stops. Our plan worked. Once the communists lost the referendum and people realised all they could muster was 25 per cent in blank votes, everybody took heart. Now they were prepared to stand up and be counted.

The shopkeepers and the grassroots leaders would greet me with huge, heavy garlands of marigolds, frangipani, sometimes even orchids, or paper flowers, bound and decorated with tinsel, if they were poor. The Chinese representatives gave me banners of silk or velvet bearing the names of the donors and adorned with elegant phrases in gold characters expressing their solidarity with us. I would collect dozens of these banners, which were then strung up around the final meeting place where they would give me dinner out in the open. The diners would sit at round tables, ten at each, and there would be at least 20 and often as many as 50 such tables paid for by the successful shopkeepers to honour the leaders of the constituency and me.

The tours were an enormous success. As I argued against the unreasonable demands of Tan Siew Sin and Razak, the people swung behind me. The crowds kept growing bigger and warmer with each visit, the leaders eager to participate in welcoming me and to be seen supporting the PAP government. The officials with me followed up, listening to the people’s requests for surfaced roads, drains, power, streetlights,
standpipes, clinics, schools, community centres. The easier needs they dealt with quickly; the more difficult ones I promised to study and meet if practical. Community centres were useful for disseminating information to counter communist propaganda, and we started building them – simple wooden structures with corrugated asbestos roofs and cement floors, each equipped with electric bulbs, a ceiling fan, a ping-pong table, a carrom table and a black-and-white television set.

The welcome committees would wait for me for hours if I was held up along the way. Old women and young girls would present petitions asking me to solve their personal grievances. The Indians would take me into their temples, scatter flowers in my path and put a colour mark on my forehead, a gesture of respect for an honoured guest. The Chinese would also bring me to their temples, and greet me at the entrance with lion dancers and the sound of gongs and drums to herald my arrival. It was good for their devotees to see the prime minister honouring their places of worship. I would burn joss-sticks in front of the altars, some Buddhist, others Taoist. The Malays would greet me with their
kompang
bands, 12 or 14 young men with tambourines and hand-held drums, and their elders would place on my head a
tanjak
, the brocade cloth folded into a cap worn by chieftains.

Barisan supporters would line some streets to boo, hiss and taunt me. As I passed the Chinese High School, 40 to 50 schoolboys with handkerchiefs covering the lower half of their faces held up placards denouncing and cursing me as a traitor to the people. In Whampoa one afternoon, Barisan toughs with the tattoos of a secret society on their forearms crowded me and tried to push me into a deep monsoon drain, but my security officer was quick to intervene and deal with them, allowing me to jump clear. Pro-Barisan union members would shout abuse from the upper floors of their premises, and one night in Hong Lim, they yelled threats at me and displayed protest banners from a flat roof. When I told the TV cameraman to turn his lights on them and
capture them on film, they switched off their own and vanished. I invited them to come down to show themselves and argue their case with me. They refused, enabling me to point out to the thousands around me that when the communists were confronted with “the masses” out in the open, they switched off their lights and slunk away to hide in the dark.

The tours were physically exhausting and a drain on my nervous energy. I would start off at eight on a Sunday morning or shortly after lunch on a weekday. The afternoons were always hot, and during one tour I would make short speeches of 10 to 15 minutes at every stop, which could add up to between 30 minutes and an hour because I had to speak in two or three languages. Sometimes I made as many as ten speeches in a day, each in Malay, English, and Hokkien or Mandarin. I would sweat profusely. I brought three or four singlets and shirts with me and would nip quietly into somebody’s toilet or behind the partition inside a shop from time to time to change into dry clothes, and I carried a small towel to wipe the sweat off my face. I would come home with my right hand bruised and painful from hundreds if not thousands of handshakes, and every now and again a real power squeeze. My back, too, was bruised and blue from bumping against the metal crossbar of the Land Rover. I learnt to offer my left hand to relieve my right, and also to push my thumb and forefinger right up against the other person’s to prevent my fingers from being squeezed, and I had a thick pad of towels wound around the crossbar to act as a shock absorber.

But I was young, under 40. My adrenaline was flowing, and I was inspired by the warm response of the crowd. Speaking in Hokkien and Mandarin, I had convinced the Chinese that I was not a stooge of the British, that I was fighting for their future. The Malays backed me because they saw me fighting the Chinese communists. The Indians, as a smaller minority, were fearful and therefore reassured to find me completely at home with all races, speaking bazaar Malay and English to them and even a few words of greeting in Tamil.

News of how each tour had been more successful than the last spread rapidly by word of mouth in the coffee shops and through the press and television. It generated a groundswell of enthusiasm among the people, especially the shopkeepers and community leaders. I became a kind of political pop star. Many of the shopkeepers had been against the young communist toughs, but had been forced to make contributions to their funds. This was their chance to show that they really supported something – me and the government. When I was on stage, they would come not only with garlands and banners but with souvenirs from their display cabinets at home, a red ribbon tied around them and a red card carrying their names and addresses to wish me well. One memorable gift was an exquisite old ivory carving of an imperial Chinese sailing ship resting on a dark lacquered base under a glass case. It was the owner’s most precious
objet d’art
. He was a shopkeeper, about 50 years old, greying at the temples, and he wished me happiness and long life in Hokkien. It still sits proudly in my sitting-room, a gift I treasure, reminding me of that great moment when I could feel the people warming to me and accepting me as their leader. The faith that these small shopkeepers placed in me inspired me to fight on.

The success of the tours prompted Lim Yew Hock to question in the Assembly their cost to the state. I was able to reply that no public funds had been misused because not a single dollar had been spent on receptions and refreshments – all had been paid for by the people themselves. The organisers deserved the credit for this and they were proud that they had mustered popular support, with local leaders happy to see themselves on television greeting me, or seated with me on the stage or at table for dinner. I could feel that the tide had turned.

The officials who accompanied me on these tours developed a strong team spirit. After trudging through many tours, listening to my explanations and exhortations on how to improve the lot of Singaporeans, they began to identify themselves with me. In the early days
from November 1962 to January 1963, we faced cool, unresponsive and sometimes hostile crowds together, and as I slowly got through to the people, they felt it was as much their achievement as mine. They ranged from the Malay driver of my Land Rover, who had to sit through and listen to hundreds of my speeches in languages he did not understand, perking up each time I spoke in Malay, to officers from the veterinary services, the Public Works Department who looked after the roads and drains, the Public Utilities Board who supplied water and electricity, and the Radio & Television Singapore crew.

They were all cheering for me, including a Chinese television “sound person”, Judy Bloodworth. Her experience was recounted by her husband Dennis Bloodworth, then
London Observer
correspondent in Singapore, in the following terms in one of his books:

“We would arrive in pitch darkness sometimes, then suddenly the lights would go up, the people would cheer and boo, and in the middle of all the noise he would be elated, push his way down among them, laugh at the lion dancers around him, careless of the roaring firecrackers, never showing fear – he was burned in the face once, but took no notice. We really felt like a team, like an army unit; we felt proud of him. You couldn’t help it.”

Most important for my success was the senior Hokkien language radio programme officer, Sia Cheng Tit. He became my volunteer teacher, noting the major mistakes I made in my speeches, and sitting down with me the next day to point out my errors and provide the correct phrases as others had done before him, sometimes throwing in a few pithy proverbs. But that was not the only way in which he improved my delivery. I would often get hoarse through the sheer physical strain of having to talk so much, and when I was rasping one night at Tiong Bahru, he handed me a packet of neatly sliced ginseng in the paper wrapping of a nearby Chinese medicine shop. I stopped sucking lozenges and, on his advice, put a slice between my cheek and gums and kept it there. It worked like magic. There was something in it that stimulated the flow of saliva and soothed my throat. Thereafter, I never went out on a tour without a packet of ginseng in my pocket.

A visit to the southern islands in 1963 meant getting the feet wet. There were no jetties. Yaacob bin Mohamed, later MP for the southern islands, is third to the left of me, wearing clear glasses and no hat.

Warm crowds greeting me at Geylang Serai (a Malay area) on 9 September 1963. Mr Rahmat Yusak drove me in this Land Rover to every corner of Singapore (1962–63). After listening to hundreds of my speeches, he became my friend and strong supporter.

The impact of my speeches was also heightened immensely by television. When I was in London in September 1962, Alex Josey, my press secretary, arranged for Hugh Burnett of the BBC to run a mock interview with me and then review my performance on the screen. I had seen an earlier programme in which I had appeared, and had been astounded at how fierce I looked. Burnett assured me that I was a natural. All I needed were a few tips: always look into the camera, never cover your mouth or nose with your hand as you speak, always lean forward in your chair – to lean backwards would make you look slovenly. His main advice: “Be natural, be direct, be yourself.” I was reassured. Television was introduced in Singapore in February 1963 and proved a powerful weapon, particularly when turned against the communists. Their techniques were those of the mass rally, where the speaker bellowed, grimaced and exaggerated his gestures in order to be seen by those at the back of the crowd. Captured on the screen with a zoom lens, the speakers looked ugly and menacing. They did not have Hugh Burnett to advise them and did themselves a great deal of harm.