The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (78 page)

Capacity crowds at the PAP’s first election rally, March 1964, at Suleiman Court, Kuala Lumpur did not translate into votes.

I replied in Kluang that half of the Tunku’s problems were created by old friends who had skilfully and cynically exploited his personal loyalty to them. I had not smeared him when I spoke in Chinese in Seremban; they should credit the PAP with enough intelligence to know that taking two different lines in two different languages would be the surest way to discredit it. But Albar still accused me of being double-faced, adding, “No one should trust Lee Kuan Yew for he is a man who does not keep his word. There is no place for men like Lee Kuan Yew in Malaya.” He had received hundreds of letters from Malays in Singapore, including government servants, complaining about their plight under the PAP, he said. It was a sinister racist line that he was to plug with ever greater venom to make the Malays hate me.

Judging by the response at mass rallies, it appeared to be a month of highly successful campaigning for the PAP. Even our canvassers came back with optimistic forecasts, for they were well received. We became confident of winning six or seven of the nine seats, and fought the campaign vigorously, pulling our punches only against UMNO, despite their attacks, notably those of Albar. At our final rally in Selangor on the eve of polling, I described Malaysia as a ship heading towards troubled waters with the Tunku at its helm; what the MCA needed to survive were not new faces but fresh ideas.

The election results, announced in the early morning of 26 April, came as a shock. By 4 am, the Alliance had won 89 out of 104 seats, doing better than in the previous election. Every Alliance cabinet minister had been returned with a bigger majority. The PAP had won only one seat, that of Devan Nair in Bungsar, and then only by 808 votes.

Where had the PAP gone wrong?

First, we did not have an indigenous party with branches and local leaders in Malaya. We had moved in workers from Singapore, and although quite a few had been born and bred in Malaya, they did not have that rapport with the grass roots needed to win their confidence. Second, we had no experience of campaigning in the Federation. In Singapore, everything was voluntary, and often even our banners were donated by supporters. In Malaya, everything had to be paid for in cash, including the workers who put up the posters and banners. By the end of the campaign, the PAP was over $60,000 in debt, after having spent some $40,000 of its own funds. Third, our token participation did not give people a good reason to switch from the MCA to the PAP. They wanted to retain links with the UMNO-led government that was in charge of issuing the licences they needed. The way to make a dent and change their voting habits would have been to field a large enough contingent to be credible, to make it worth their while to back us in the expectation that we would be strong enough to cut a deal with UMNO. We did not understand the power equation that was uppermost in the minds of the urban voters of Malaya, 75 per cent of whom were Chinese or Indian and only 25 per cent Malay.

Did PAP participation in the election cause relations between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore to deteriorate? Yes, but it made no difference to the main cause of conflict and eventual separation – UMNO’s determination to maintain total Malay supremacy.

After we lost, our relations with UMNO ministers did not deteriorate dramatically, but they could not have remained smooth for long because
of this fundamental difference between us. They wanted us to confine ourselves to Chinese voters and stop appealing to the Malays. They would not tolerate any challenge to their hold on their Malay political base. The Malay electorate was out of bounds to non-Malay parties like the PAP. The MCA accepted that restriction. We did not.

In retrospect, I believe it would have been worse for Singapore had we postponed participation in Malaysian elections till the next election in 1969. The same problems would have arisen with UMNO, but with Confrontation ended, the restraining influence of the British would have diminished, because their troops would no longer have been needed, and Malay leaders would have been even less inhibited in dealing with the PAP.

UMNO was elated by its victory, the MCA was relieved, and trouble was in store for the PAP. To show the displeasure of the Alliance with our party, the Speaker – probably after consulting the Tunku, for he was an UMNO MP – moved the five PAP ministerial members representing Singapore in the federal parliament, who had previously been seated on the government side, over to the opposition benches to join the seven others already there. Among other things, it looked as if Keng Swee’s fears that our industrialisation plans would be aborted by the Alliance were well founded.

On 17 April, speaking in Singapore to the four chambers of commerce at a dinner in my honour after my mission to Africa, I had already given one good reason why we had to contest the federal election: “As long as the MCA believe that they can make a comeback in Singapore using their ministerial position in the federal government, they will be tempted to obstruct or interfere in Singapore,” and that would inevitably lead to a repetition of the sharp conflict that had bedevilled financial negotiations over merger.

Until mid-July, things were relatively quiet. Surprisingly, Tan Siew Sin showed magnanimity in victory by inviting me to a Chinese steamboat
dinner at the Federal Government Lodge at Fraser’s Hill. I accepted the invitation readily. He was affable, bubbling and confident. Our personal relations had not deteriorated to a point where we could not be civil and sociable, and I was determined to keep them on an even keel. His father had been particularly kind to me.

The tragedy of Tan was the tragedy of that whole generation of Straits-born Chinese. They did not understand that the rules were different in an independent Malaya – later Malaysia – from those they had been accustomed to under the British. The Malays were now the rulers. They felt insecure because they believed they could not compete on par with the Chinese and Indians. They were therefore determined to consolidate their hold on power regardless of whether it was fair or unfair to the other races, and the more the Chinese and Indians tried to win enough space for themselves, the more they saw it as a challenge to their position as rulers, and the more insecure they felt. Tan was totally insensitive to this, as were most Straits-born Chinese. In contrast, members of the Chinese-speaking merchant class were quick to realise the dangers in this new situation. They were already beginning to feel the heat, for more out of a sense of insecurity than any desire to kill Chinese culture, the Malay leaders were imposing on them an education policy designed to conscribe and to minimise the learning of the Chinese language and the transmission of Chinese culture through their Chinese schools.

The Indians in Malaysia, like Raja’s brother in Seremban, were similarly apprehensive about the future because the English language was being replaced by Malay. They knew they were a minority with no chance of achieving power, and were happy to go along with any group that would leave them the space to live and advance, but they, too, were fearful of the changes that would deprive their children of a good education and fair prospects. They were losing their monopoly of jobs on Malayan Railways as more and more Malays were recruited. Worse still, as time went by, the big rubber estates owned by British companies
were being sold to government institutions. Large numbers of Indian rubber tappers who had lived on those estates and had their own schools teaching in Tamil were ill-prepared for re-employment in other fields. They were to become a problem.

For the Malays, too, there were ominous social and political changes, which had intensified their feeling of insecurity. For the first time, the Tunku found he had to defend himself in parliament for giving expatriate officers a 10 per cent pay rise. Not only did the PAP and the Socialist Front MPs attack him, but the Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services and senior government officers in Malaya had also taken a leaf out of the Singapore experience and mounted a protest. A week later, the government backed down. A statement issued after a cabinet meeting said that it had not been made aware of the possibly serious repercussions in the civil service and expressed its regrets for any inconvenience caused. Malaya’s cosy politics had taken on a sharper edge, with the PAP bringing Singapore’s norms into Malaysia’s public debate.

The Tunku’s increased electoral support drew a sharp reaction from Sukarno. After a six-hour meeting with the president, Subandrio issued directions to step up the “Crush Malaysia” campaign in all fields. In June, the Tunku met Sukarno and Macapagal in Tokyo. The meeting collapsed, with Sukarno repeating, “I say a thousand times that I cannot accept Malaysia. I say a thousand times this (Malaysia) is a British act. It must be crushed.” This threat was countered by the Australian prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies, reaffirming his country’s support for Malaysia, and on 26 June, President Johnson said the United States would stand by ANZUS, the defence agreement that linked Australia and New Zealand to the US. America would be involved in the Malaysia dispute if its two allies ran into difficulties. Confrontation could be contained.

But we had more reason to worry about Albar. What he was planning we did not know, and would only learn on Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday.

36. Albar Stokes Up Malay Passions

Syed Ja’afar Albar was the hatchet man of the UMNO leaders hostile to Singapore. Originally from Indonesia but of Arab descent, he was small, balding, a bundle of energy with a round face, a moustache and a good, strong voice. In the early 1950s, he had seemed friendly. In February 1955, when I was seeing the Tunku off on the ship that would take him to England for the Constitutional Conference, Albar urged me to get closer to the Tunku so that we could be photographed together for the press, saying in Malay, “take a ride on the old boy’s fame”. But he was a great rabble-rouser, skilful in working up the mob and, as I was to learn, totally ruthless and unscrupulous in his methods. His English was not adequate for public speaking, but his Malay was superb, his delivery powerful. He did not need to be reported in the English-language press, which would have shown him up as a racist to English speakers not only in Malaysia but internationally. He concentrated on the Malay newspapers, and his most strident lines were confined to them, especially to the
Utusan Melayu
, which was printed in Jawi (the Arabic script) and not read by the Chinese, Indians, British or other Europeans. The
Utusan
had been bought by UMNO, and was Albar’s weapon of choice for multiplying the effect of his speeches.

Albar and the Malay press kept repeating the falsehood that I had belittled the Tunku as a leader of little calibre. They now mounted a campaign to work up a sense of grievance among Malays over specific issues, real or imaginary, playing on the fact that theirs was the least successful and the poorest of the different communities in Singapore. The truth was that the Malays were never discriminated against by the PAP government. On the contrary, they were given free education,
something not accorded to children of other races, and although there was no Malay quota for taxi or hawker licences as in Malaya, we made sure that there were always Malay shops and stalls to cater for Malay customers in our Housing and Development Board neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, on 13 May 1964, the
Utusan
reported that there was anxiety and unrest among Malays over the allocation of stalls in the new Geylang Serai market, and in June claimed that the PAP’s policy on schools had led to Malay education becoming retrogressive.

Albar’s offensive had started on 21 September 1963, immediately after Singapore’s general election, when Singapore UMNO accused members of the PAP of intimidating the Malays in Geylang Serai on the eastern side of the island, by throwing firecrackers at their homes after the PAP had won in the three Malay constituencies. I did not realise then that this was part of a campaign. If our supporters did throw firecrackers I should apologise, and I did so on television. On investigation, the charges proved completely unfounded. But regardless of the truth, UMNO leaders were able to work up enough feelings to have me burnt in effigy a week later.