Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  “Of course, now it’s weakened by time and they have seen China fail. I think the biggest shock and disillusionment to them was to see that China was after all not a success, that it was a mirage. That was the biggest shock because these people were trading on that belief, that if you help them win here, they would produce the same China miracle. But then there was no China miracle, which was the biggest shock of all.”

  “We were frightened, but not so frightened as to give up. I did not believe that their system was right, that it would win. I believed it was basically flawed, it was evil. They had personal attractive qualities, they wanted to do good to the people. But the system was such that in the end it would do harm to people, completely ruthless. I don’t know, maybe it’s just a visceral reaction; you see, it is not something you argue intellectually.

  “Even for people like us, we had our moments of doubt whether we were wise in taking them on, so I used to discuss it with Goh Keng Swee. One book we discussed was Hugh Seton Watson on Russia and how the communists took over, on Lenin’s methods and so on. And at that time, we thought that the Soviet Union had become transformed as a powerful industrial state. We didn’t know that it was all just a Potemkin village, just a façade.”

  Can they ever give up?

  In May 1987, the Internal Security Department uncovered a Marxist plot involving people in the Catholic Church and opposition parties, mainly English-educated people. Lee was not surprised that the communists had now turned to the English-educated for converts. As he pointed out in a speech to Parliament on May 27, 1988,

  “Can they give up? A whole lifetime of tens of thousands of people, determined, dedicated, zealous. They don’t give up. They must dive into the English-educated world and capture new recruits, however difficult. If reading Mao in the translation is difficult and doesn’t enthuse and fire them, well maybe they can read whatever literature French or Italian communists read. Or maybe nearer home, what Filipinos are putting out in English …”

  Lee told the authors,

  “They need not start as a communist party. You know, just like in Europe they become social democrats and so on. But the method of organisation to capture power has nothing to do with the ideology. It is a technique of acquiring power. There are two different things. One is the ideology, your beliefs, which helps to generate the sense of inevitability and therefore making the recruitment easier. Inevitability of victory. The other is the method of organising secretly, using persuasion and force when necessary and capturing power, creating disorder. And that is independent of ideology. And that, I think, we must prevent them from ever bringing back to Singapore.”

  PAP ministers S. Rajaratnam (right) and Toh Chin Chye (second from right) appealing for calm at Arab Street after the Prophet Mohammed birthday riots on July 21, 1964.

  3

  The Union Divided

  One sultry July afternoon in 1964, the streets of Singapore exploded with such violence that it not only left 21 persons dead and 460 injured, but also marked the beginning of the end of Singapore’s place in Malaysia. The expulsion would take place 13 months later, but there is no doubt now that the fuse was lighted that riotous afternoon. Exactly who was responsible has never been brought out into the open and there is reluctance even now to reopen old wounds. But many suspect there were larger forces at work than just the random explosion of anger and hatred between Chinese and Malays in Singapore.

  The day itself had begun peacefully enough when 25,000 Muslims gathered on the Padang to celebrate Prophet Mohammed’s birthday and began to move towards the largely Malay district of Geylang. Fighting first erupted shortly after 5 pm as the main body moved along Kallang Road. Police and riot squads were called in and a curfew was imposed until the following morning, then reimposed and progressively lifted over the next 11 days. According to Lee Kuan Yew, then the prime minister, who went on the air that night to appeal for calm, the first spark was ignited when a member of the Federal Reserve Unit asked a group which was straggling away from the procession to rejoin the main body. Instead of being obeyed, he was set upon. This differed from the version offered by the Federation’s Acting Prime Minister Tun Razak the next day. He traced the origin to a mischief-maker who had flung a bottle at the procession as it passed through the Kallang area. The conflicting reports underscored the suspicion and tension between the two sides, and did not help calm the already nervous and agitated population.

  To understand why it happened and, more important, why when it did happen it would lead eventually to the end of Singapore’s 23-month merger in Malaysia, it is necessary to delve into the history of the union. How Singapore became a part of Malaysia, why so many men believed it was inevitable, the subsequent problems with merger when perhaps even more people wanted Singapore out, and the final act of expulsion – these are now indelibly etched in the nation’s history. But they have a significance beyond being just a part of history.

  Lee pauses to gain his composure as he speaks during a press conference on August 9, 1965 about the parting of ways between Singapore and Malaysia. “For me, it is a moment of anguish because all my life … I have believed in merger and the unity of these two territories.”

  More than anything else, these events defined the birth of modern, independent Singapore. Lee was at the forefront of it all, first leading the campaign for merger, and then at the centre of the conflict which led to expulsion. His role in this tumultuous period and his views about the union and the subsequent problems are hence of immense importance in understanding the nature of Singapore’s creation.

  The biggest regret

  To this day, Lee counts the failure of merger with Malaysia as his biggest political regret. But he also believes that without the experience of merger and the subsequent expulsion, Singapore would not have survived the early test of nationhood. The experience, he has no doubt, made Singaporeans acutely conscious of the difficulties ahead, of the unique circumstances surrounding the unplanned birth of independent Singapore, and made them want to put in the extra effort to make it alone.

  It was a costly experience, of this there can be no doubt. It not only brought the two major races in Singapore into conflict, it pitted the political leadership of Singapore against that of the federal government in Kuala Lumpur. And it made Indonesia embark on an open confrontation with Malaysia. Despite all these, Lee was at the time convinced that merger was absolutely vital.

  “Had the British heeded the history of the peoples of Malaya and geography and economic realities, they would have put Singapore into the Malayan Union, just like Penang and Malacca. But they had other considerations in mind. A military base, the fact that an island of 224 square miles would be easily controlled militarily, and that although it may be difficult to deny independence to 7 millions in 50,000 square miles of the Federation up in revolt, it may well be possible to maintain power for quite some time in an island of 224 square miles. And so by the fancy of planners and map-makers in London, we are today out on a limb, the victim of a freak man-made frontier. For the time being, the aims of these London map-makers look like being successful, at least in the immediate short term. For now the British are in the happy position of saying that it is the Federation government that does not want Singapore and that is the reason why there is no merger. I would hazard a guess that if tomorrow a Federation government said it wanted Singapore, the British would be the most unhappy and unwilling people in the world.

  “But whatever the twists and turns of events in the immediate present, the relentless logic of geography and the force of historical, ethnic and economic forces must prevail. Throughout history, Singapore, or Temasek as it was called, was part of the Johor mainland. Raffles contrived to separate Singapore from the mainland politically by settling with the Temenggong of Johor. And to this day, as part of this settlement, the Singapore government has to pay the descendants of Sultan Husain a yearly pension, now about $50,000 per annum. Never in recorded history has Temasek existed otherwise than as a part a
nd parcel of the mainland in Johor. And in fact, in more recent history Singapore was the capital of the Straits Settlements from 1867, and the capital of the High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States and the Unfederated Malay States. And to formalise the link the causeway was built and completed in 1923.”

  (Speech to the Guild of Nanyang University Graduates, November 6, 1960)

  The problem with the idea, so eminently sensible from an economic perspective, arose out of the racial composition of Malaya, which was predominantly Malay, and Singapore, which was mainly Chinese. This ethnic imbalance was complicated by the historical role of the Malay rulers, which had been protected under British colonial administration. Malay rights were entrenched in the Malay states, and there were job quotas for Malays in the civil service and in enrolment in schools and the university. This was radically different from the way in which the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore operated, with open competition among the races in the economy.

  Malay leaders in the peninsula were anxious to ensure that their privileged position was not eroded by any other political arrangement. Indeed, when the colonial office in London announced, in 1946, a plan to create a unitary state consisting of the Federated Malay States, the Unfederated Malay States and the Straits Settlements under the Malayan Union scheme, the reaction from the Malay leadership was so adverse, the plan had to be scuttled. In its place came the Federation of Malaya Agreement in 1948, in which the sovereignty of the sultans and the special position of the Malays were preserved.

  Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that the idea of Singapore merging with Malaya, no matter how mutually advantageous for the two countries, would be resisted by the Malay ground. Merger would dilute their numerical strength. In 1960, they numbered 3.1 million compared to 2.3 million Chinese and 700,000 Indians. With Singapore included in the equation, the Malay majority would end, with their population at 3.4 million (42 per cent), less than the combined Chinese population of 3.6 million (45 per cent).

  It was not, however, just the numerical issue which worried the Malays but the qualitative nature of those numbers. The Chinese leadership in Singapore, with Lee and his largely English-educated colleagues pitted against their mainly Chinese-educated opponents both within the PAP and in various communist united front organisations, could not but be viewed with some apprehension in Kuala Lumpur. Here was a group of men impatient to change their country’s destiny, to kick the British out but who no one doubted would then turn to the larger battle to decide who had the right to govern Singapore. And so the merger idea, while it might have had the weight of history behind it, was never embraced by the Malay leadership with much enthusiasm.

  But, as Lee explained in a speech in 1962, the reluctance to embrace Singapore was gradually being overtaken by the realisation that it could become a very serious political and security risk for Malaya if left to its own devices. The possibility of Singapore turning communist, which might then begin to create problems for the peninsula, was very real.

  A relaxed meeting between Singapore government ministers and leaders from Sarawak and North Borneo in 1961, to discuss the Malaysia Plan, which spelt out terms for the merger with the Peninsula.

  “Officially, Malaysia began when the Tunku, the prime minister of the Federation of Malaya, came down to Singapore to make a speech to some foreign correspondents in May of last year, and he said he was all in favour of closer economic and political association between Malaya, Singapore and the Borneo territories; a fateful pronouncement, because for the first time he acknowledged that he had to have economic and political association with Singapore. Since 1955, when he was somewhat aghast at the boisterousness of the people in Singapore, his policy has been one of systematic isolation and the cutting of all ties between Singapore and the Federation in the fond belief that the British could look after Singapore.

  “I spent a great deal of time and effort between 1955 and 1959, when I assumed office, trying to convince him that in the long run he had to reckon with Singapore, and that it was easier if he included us in his overall calculations and started on the basis of Singapore as part of his overall problems than if he tried to pass the problem-child over to the British. I will tell you that I was amazed and astonished at the turn of events which, between 1959 and 1961, helped me to bring home to him the realities of the position. Of course, the British, in their own pragmatic way, also helped, but I would say that nobody, however well-informed, could have foreseen the rapidity with which events developed in and around Malaysia. I certainly did not, because I had envisaged an unpleasant time trying to contain an almost uncontainable situation in isolation from Malaya. But, fortunately, our enemies made a number of mistakes which helped us: first in convincing the Tunku that Singapore mattered to him, that the British could not look after Singapore for him indefinitely, that he had to come to terms with Singapore, and that the best way of coming to terms with Singapore was to come to terms with Malaysia in the context of Southeast Asia. That is really the heart of the matter with regard to Malaysia. The Tunku never thought about the Borneo territories. He never imagined that he would be a sponsor of a plan that would form a viable broadly-based nation in Southeast Asia comprising these five British possessions. His attitude between 1955 and 1959 was one which is not unnatural in people who have just inherited tremendous problems of their own, of just minding their own business, and he had a lot of business to mind in Malaya. He was doing well, and he saw no reason why he should undertake problems, the nature of which he did not like and the prospects of providing solutions to which he was uncertain of.

  “… But in the course of the first 18 months we were able to convince him and his colleagues that if he allowed the Singapore situation to continue in isolation to Malaya he would create a position where it was worthwhile to make a political appeal based on the Chinese alone. Because if 70 per cent of the people in Singapore are Chinese, and you can win the majority of the 70, you can win political power on the basis of one-man-one-vote, and whatever he tried to do with his 2.5 million Chinese in the Federation, as long as a contrary cause was going on in Singapore, he would fail to win over these 2.5 million Chinese in the Federation, because they are one people and one political situation; what happened in the Federation had its effect on Singapore and vice versa. The argument convinced him, and he was coming round to the view that it was better to move ahead of events, hence that momentous speech when he casually mentioned closer political and economic association. We responded, we welcomed it, and we said that if Malaysia helped merger we were all in favour of it, and that led off a chain of events which has completely altered the outlook in Malaysia for the next decade.”

  (Speech at the Royal Society of International Affairs in London, May 1962; text of speech on page 279)

  The battle for merger

  A joyous celebration marked symbolically by the release of pigeons as eight PAP leaders walked out of Changi Prison in June 1959, days after the new PAP government came into power. Lee had secured from them an undertaking that they would support a non-communist Malaya.

  Singapore’s place in Malaysia was sealed when the people voted over-whelmingly to support the government’s proposals in a 1962 referendum. The result: 71 per cent voted in favour of merger under the terms proposed by the government, with only 25 per cent heeding the Barisan Sosialis’ call to return blank votes. The defeat of the Barisan marked the turning point for the party and for the fortunes of the communist united front in Singapore.

  In September 1963, a year after the referendum, Lee called a snap election in which the PAP won a landslide victory, capturing 37 of the 51 seats. Lee related to the authors how the PAP gained the upper hand in this battle for the hearts and minds of Singaporeans.

  “The basic programme was no independence until merger because we knew independence before merger would lead to a real danger of a communist government. So after merger, if a communist government emerged, it’s only a communist state government
, not an international government, a sovereign government.

  “In 1957, when I came back from the constitutional talks in London, I defended my position that we should accept this constitution as the first step and we cannot have independence until we get merger and we will then fight and work for merger.

  “So before we fought to win the elections in ’59, I got an undertaking from the key players – Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan, James Puthucheary, Woodhull and Devan Nair (four PAP members imprisoned by the Lim Yew Hock government in a security swoop in 1956) – a statement on the principles of democratic socialism which stated quite clearly that we are working for a non-communist Malaya and merger as the way to independence. And they signed it. The draft was done by them and approved by me before they signed it. When merger came, they could not back out because that was the agreed programme on which the PAP fought and won the elections.

  “So it was a matter of being committed to a policy which they could not back out from. I took the precaution of having everything spelt out in a document. Partly my legal training. I wasn’t going to accept their verbal protestations of loyalty. I said, ‘Do you agree with it? Yes? Sign it.’ So they could not go back. And they did go back, but they could not credibly say, ‘No, we want 95 per cent independence but still under the British, not under Malaysia.’ That really was their position. It was an untenable position which they had committed themselves to before we fought and won the elections.”