Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas

by Han Fook Kwang

  Ong Eng Guan, who rode to victory at the Hong Lim by-election on the crest of Chinese chauvinism.

  Communists and communalists

  The one critical event which was the turning point for the Tunku and made him agree, reluctantly, to an idea he had long tried to avoid was the PAP’s defeat at the Hong Lim by-election in April 1961. The victor, Ong Eng Guan, was a former PAP maverick sacked from the party and disrobed of his National Development Ministry post after he criticised government policies and party structure. During the one-and-a-half-month campaign to win back his seat, he was attacked incessantly by the party for his character flaws but emerged unscathed to win a landslide victory against the PAP candidate. What had swayed the Hong Lim voters was his appeal to Chinese chauvinism and anti-colonialism and his demand for immediate and unconditional independence from Britain.

  “We had just lost the Hong Lim by-election so he (Tunku) knew that Chinese chauvinism, which Ong Eng Guan represented, was going to be a major force, and Chinese chauvinism would move in the same direction as communism. At the same time, I believe the British must have been presenting him with the arguments why, in the long run, he had to absorb Singapore in the Federation. In fact, we now know that they had a meeting in London.”

  A victory for the PAP government that marked a milestone in the run-up to merger with Malaysia. “The verdict of the people is a terrifying thing for the politically dishonest. The verdict is decisive. It is the seal of public and popular approval for merger and Malaysia. We are off to a good start.”

  With the Tunku finally in favour of merger, the one remaining opposition to it would come from the communist united front led by the Barisan Sosialis, the breakaway left-wing faction of the PAP. The Barisan Sosialis opposed the merger for obvious reasons: a Singapore subsumed under an anti-communist government in Kuala Lumpur would mean the end of its bid to create a communist state in Singapore.

  Its battle against the PAP for the hearts and minds of Singaporeans would end with its defeat at a referendum in September 1962, when 71 per cent of Singaporeans voted for merger under the terms proposed by the government. But even as the PAP appeared to be winning its battles with the communists, its problems with the Malay leadership in Malaysia were growing by the day. The warning signs were already there, at the outset, during the protracted negotiations between the two governments on the terms for merger. The critical discussions were of course those between Lee and the Tunku.

  “The hours I spent, you know, negotiating and playing golf and eating meals with the Tunku. He is not a man who will sit down and negotiate seriously and finish in two hours all the difficult issues and say, ‘All right, we can’t finish it – tomorrow, we’ll meet again.’ He works at his own pace. And when he comes to a tricky problem, he will take weeks to think about it. Meanwhile, you play golf with him, you play poker with him, you go to weddings with him. And slowly, he begins to reshape his thinking and test out his new ideas. Then finally, when he’s cleared it up in his own mind, he agrees to something which may be what we had wanted or modified what we wanted.”

  But the Tunku was not, as far as Lee was concerned, the problem. Indeed, in several speeches he made at the time, Lee said that Singapore was fortunate in having to deal with a man as reasonable as the Tunku and so had to take advantage of this opportune moment for merger.

  Lee enjoying a light moment with the Tunku during a meet-the-press session on October 1, 1962. “Today we are dealing with a reasonable man in the Tunku. And he is a reasonable man, otherwise he wouldn’t have given this agreement.”

  “You know, if we are farsighted we should move ahead of history and in keeping with our history. If we are foolish, obstinate or selfish and want to thwart history, then remember this: today we are dealing with a reasonable man in the Tunku. And he is a reasonable man, otherwise he wouldn’t have given this agreement which has been put in the White Paper on merger. There is no selling out Singapore to him because he does not want to buy out Singapore …

  “So, I say to the people of Singapore, my duty to them is to do my best for them. And my best, in fact, best in the circumstances, is to reach reasonable agreement with a reasonable prime minister in charge of the Federation of Malaya. Nobody doubts, particularly the Chinese, that the Tunku is not anti-Chinese.

  “If you don’t want to reach agreement with the Tunku – let us assume one day – supposing you get a Pan-Malayan Islamic Party prime minister in the Federation, and the chap says why not close down Nanyang University – you’ve heard it in Parliament itself, they want to close down Nanyang University – Chinese middle schools would be wiped out, and a lot of other things besides. Bank of China will be closed, that is part of the Federation banking laws. We have looked after the entrepôt trade. We say Singapore depends for its survival on free trade with the whole world, including China. And the Tunku, you heard him … he is basically a reasonable man, and he says, ‘Well all right, this is running well, leave it alone, carry on.’

  “You wait – if one of these days, and God forbid, there is an unreasonable man, I am not saying all PMIP chaps are unreasonable but, you know, fanatical people, particularly religiously fanatical, are likely to be bigoted and bigotry leads to all kinds of harshness and uncompromising attitudes. So let us cement our relations in a mould which suits us while we have the opportunity to do so.”

  (Speech broadcast on November 19, 1961)

  Endless bargaining

  The problem however was that it was not all up to the Tunku. His advisers and ministers made things difficult for Lee and the PAP. The signs, even then, did not portend well for the future.

  If I’m arrested …

  “One thing we cannot give away: a Malaysian Malaysia.” It was on this principle that the Malaysian Solidarity Convention, drawing together parties from Singapore, Sarawak, Sabah and Malaya, was founded. It held its first rally at Singapore’s National Theatre on June 6, 1965.

  At the height of Lee’s problems with the Malay leadership in Kuala Lumpur in 1965, rumour was rife that he would be detained and put out of action. At the time, when Lee was asked whether he knew how close he was to being incarcerated, he spoke about what the reaction in Singapore might be to such a move.

  “Do you believe that you can just arrest a few PAP leaders and then life in Singapore will go on with these leaders quietly stashed away, being fed, I hope, kindly and adequately, and all the other leaders will carry on and govern Singapore quietly and keep the workers happy, and factories will go up and all will be nice and happy? Or do you think, step after step, it goes on until finally, again you have no democratic or representative government and it is ruled by extra-constitutional methods? It must lead to that, isn’t it? And when it leads to that, I say, what is the way out? Can they sustain that kind of a Malaysia? Can Australia, New Zealand afford to be associated in defence of that sort of Malaysia? Can Britain? Has she got the capacity of the Americans in Vietnam to sustain that sort of Malaysia? Because that is required once you move into that situation. A thousand miles of frontier on the Borneo border, 600 to 700 miles from Singapore to Perlis, a guerilla civil war restarts, the British can support that? First of all, will they want to support it? Secondly, assuming that they have to because they are committed, have they got the capacity to do that for one, two, three, or ten years?

  “… Once you have a revulsion of feeling, an antipathy against a regime, where, do you think, the communists will come up? You mean they will just cheer and say, ‘Well, three cheers now the PAP is out of the way’; they will take over the constitutional stage and they will win the next elections and govern Singapore and keep Singapore happy? Or do you think they will mount, together as others mount, mount a campaign which must lead in the end to the complete dissolution of Malaysia? … Therefore, we try very hard to be as patient and as forbearing as we can.

  “But on one thing we cannot give way: a Malaysian Malaysia. Otherwise, it means nothing to us. It means nothing to me and to the other Malaysians who ar
e here with me. Any other kind of Malaysia, I have no place. I have therefore no stake in that kind of Malaysia, and I am not going to help defend, protect or advance its cause. Why should I?”

  (Press conference May 22, 1965; extracts on page 290)

  “On his (the Tunku’s) side, he was quite happy to have us run everything, except police and army. But in the negotiations, his finance minister wanted our money, his post and telecoms minister wanted this. So at the departmental ministerial level, they wanted to take over everything. Whereas the bargain between him and me was: You be the New York, you do exactly what you like; don’t give me trouble in internal security and foreign affairs and defence, you be New York, don’t worry. But his ministers or their civil servants and particularly Tan Siew Sin, the finance minister, wanted to put his finger into every single pie in Singapore. So there was endless argument and bargaining.”

  Those arguments would continue even after Singapore became a part of Malaysia on August 31, 1963, and would intensify in degree and vitriol over the next two years. There were disputes over how much of its revenue Singapore should contribute towards the entity, and heated exchanges ensued when the Federation asked for 60 per cent and not 40 per cent, as originally agreed. Singapore also opposed Kuala Lumpur’s plan to raise taxes and was particularly shocked by a new turnover tax and payroll tax which it felt would hurt the country’s labour-intensive industries already suffering from the trade embargo with Indonesia. On top of that, Singapore businessmen complained that they were treated unfairly in the granting of tax concessions and apportioning of textile export quotas.

  On the political front, one particularly contentious issue was the extent in which the ruling parties in Singapore and peninsular Malaysia could participate in the domestic politics of each other’s territory. Should the PAP campaign in Malaya? Likewise, should the Alliance party be allowed to take on the PAP in Singapore? Whatever the unspoken agreement on either side before merger, punches were not pulled soon after. Alliance leaders came to Singapore, evidently to give support to the Malayan Chinese Association branch there. Responding, the PAP fielded 11 parliamentary and 15 state candidates for the 1964 general election, sparking off some of the most heated exchanges between the two sides. Tan Siew Sin saw this as “nothing less than a challenge to the MCA as to whether it is the PAP or the MCA that should represent the Chinese in Malaysia.”

  The Federation’s finance minister was Tan Siew Sin, whom Lee described to the authors as wanting “to put his finger into every single pie in Singapore”. Constant bickering over money matters marked the brief period of union.

  Alliance leaders were also uneasy about the PAP’s intentions in the Federation following its hints of changing deeply entrenched social and economic policies there if it could supplant the MCA as UMNO’s biggest partner. The PAP was questioned on its definition of social revolution, and asked if this meant the disappearance of the Sultans in Malaysia or the nationalisation of rubber estates and tin mines. Deputy Prime Minister Tun Razak also said he doubted the sincerity of the party towards the Malays and their welfare. Lee is adamant that what the PAP sought to do was no more than what any legitimate political party was expected to do in a parliamentary democracy. But he believed too that the Kuala Lumpur leadership had a completely different view about the sanctity of its rule and the limits to which it would allow the PAP to alter that status quo.

  Was he against Malay rights?

  “How does our talking Malay here or writing … in Malay increase the production of the Malay farmers?” The Malays, Lee contended, would be helped not by special rights, but by concrete policies that would uplift their lives.

  Lee’s most provocative speech throughout the 23-month merger with Malaysia was made in the heart of the Malay leadership in Kuala Lumpur when he spoke in the Federal Parliament. It was all the more remarkable because he delivered parts of it in fluent Malay. Neither the language he used nor the message he conveyed would have endeared him to his increasingly vexed audience, for the thrust of his argument was that their policies would do nothing to uplift the Malays. The issue was not Malay rights, but whether those rights by themselves would bring progress and development to the country.

  “This is a very dangerous thing, leading people to believe that if we just switch in 1967 from talking English in the courts, and in business, to speaking Malay, therefore the imbalance in social and economic development will disappear. It will not disappear. How does our talking Malay here or writing to the ministers of the federal government, both Malays and non-Malays, in Malay, how does that increase the production of the Malay farmers? The price he gets for his products, the facilities he gets from the government, fertilisation, research into better seeds, marketing boards. How does that raise him? In fact our worry is not with Article 153, which gives special reservations to Malays for jobs and licences. I am saying it is inimical to the country. What I am saying is that it has been in force now for 10 years with the imbalance between the rural and the urban areas widening.

  “ … Of course, there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? That is what Alliance means. Mr Speaker, Sir, I am sorry to say it, but that is how it works. How does that solve the ground problem? How does telling the Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director and the Chinese conductor to join another party of his Chinese director – how does that improve the living standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers of the same company? It is just splitting the workers up. We have taken some time before, we have come down to the bone and it cannot go on like this.

  “If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are not Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights – where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don’t speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967. The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if it doesn’t happen, what happens then?”

  (Debate in the Federal Parliament, May 27, 1965; extracts on page 296)

  “We were limited in franchise in the centre, in the sense that our voting strength was not reflected in the Federal Parliament. But we were not limited in our political influence to persuade the other voters in Malaya and Sabah and Sarawak to follow and support our policies. That was open to us and that was what the Tunku got very vexed about. … It was very clear from the beginning that what the Tunku would like and what we hoped to achieve in the end were not identical. But we were convinced that once Malaysia came about, change was inevitable and that the Tunku would change in accordance with the new situation. But we also knew we would take a very long time to be able to persuade the people outside of Singapore to a policy and a programme which would benefit them as much as Singapore. It’s not easy, because their interest meant that they would want investments all over, development, education, to be spread out. So it would be a gradual process which may take 20, 30 or more years. And we were prepared for that.

  “… In retrospect – this is with six-by-six vision hindsight – what the Tunku never made explicit, but which his aides made explicit after Malaysia: you can persuade the non-Malays inside Malaya, but you are forbidden to touch the Malays, that is against the rule.

  “Indeed, they went one step further: even the Malays in Singapore, we cannot persuade. We must lay off the Malays. That was never made explicit. But it became explicit once we started campaigning … it was their way of ensuring Malay supremacy. Make the Malays feel different. They will vote differently. They are a different bloc. Nobody should interfere. Non-Malays cannot interfere in this bloc. And until we came along, there were no effective parties making an appeal to the Malays. And we presented an alternative.”

  Not accustomed to Malay rule

  If there was one speech that captured th
e essence of the fundamental conflict between the PAP and the Malay leadership, it was made by Lee at his last appearance in the Dewan Rakyat (the Federal Parliament in Kuala Lumpur) on May 27, 1965. He gave a brutally frank assessment of what he thought were the inadequacies of the Alliance’s policies, delivered in Malay with a directness the people in Kuala Lumpur were unaccustomed to.

  Lee would refer to the speech a few months later, back in Singapore, when he would be as frank to his own people about what he thought was the problem with the Kuala Lumpur leadership.

  “Not so long ago, in June, they tested our mettle – openly, in Parliament in Kuala Lumpur. They got a prominent backbencher to move the Address of Thanks to the King’s speech. He said, ‘The trouble with Singapore is that it is not accustomed to Malay rule’ – very fierce words to tell us, face to face, in Parliament!

  “And that was a moment of truth for us. They stared us in the eye and said, ‘You are not accustomed to Malay rule, and you are going to get it!’

  “Had we melted, I say it would have been lost. We stood up on our hind legs and we said, ‘You show me where we agreed to Malay rule. We have never been accustomed to it and do not intend to become accustomed. We will fight.’

  “We did not actually say it in words so crude as that. At that time, if we had said that in that crude way, it would have led to a fight. But we said it politely, leaving them to the clear conclusion that if we have to die, so be it. They said, ‘Right, in that case, get out.’”