Singapore after Lee Kuan Yew -- New Mandala

Singapore after Lee Kuan Yew -- New Mandala
HAMISH MCDONALD – 27 MARCH 2015

Will Singapore Inc survive the passing of its long-time CEO, and more importantly will there finally be time for rhyme, asks Hamish McDonald?

When James Minchin, an Anglican priest from Australia who had lived in Singapore for many years, wrote an insightful book about its then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1986, he gave it the title No Man is an Island.

Yet when this week, after Lee died at the age of 91, his son and current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong broke the news to the nation by stating: “We won’t see another man like him. To many Singaporeans, and indeed others too, Lee Kuan Yew was Singapore.”

Now that his overpowering presence is gone, the question is whether the Singapore that was almost synonymous with Lee Kuan Yew will hold together or start to fragment (or free up, to use a less ominous term).

It was sometimes called Singapore Inc, reflecting its tight managerial style of government and directed thinking, but the island-republic has at times more closely resembled a family firm rather than an executive-run corporation.

Not only has the family provided two prime ministers, the Civil Aviation Authority, state-owned SingTel, the sovereign investment fund Temasek, and the Singapore Armed Forces have all had Lee family members in command positions.

The family law firm, Lee & Lee, for many years run by Lee Kuan Yew’s late wife, was one instrument used to break political challengers from outside the ruling People’s Action Party through the notorious defamation actions in a cowed judiciary.

The bureaucracy would dig up dirt on political defectors like former president Devan Nair or former solicitor-general Francis Seow. The details would then be slathered across the state-owned print and broadcast media. After standing as an opposition candidate, Chee Soon Juan lost his university job after alleged misuse of official stationery and postage was suddenly discovered.

Yet after continuous power since 1959, the grip of the PAP on the minds of Singaporeans has noticeably weakened.

The last elections in 2011 saw its vote share fall to 60 per cent, its lowest ever. Though the PAP still held 81 of the 87 seats in parliament, the first-past-the-post voting system could translate further electoral slippage into an avalanche of seats for the opposition.

With attractive young professionals like the lawyer-academic Sylvia Lim replacing the old soap-box orators like Jayaretnam in the Workers Party of Singapore, the opposition is much more presentable to the public vis-à-vis the high-achievers typically recruited by the PAP, and perhaps seen as less elitist.

The PAP itself could break up along factional lines, especially if Lee Hsien Loong hands over to a non-family successor.

Beneath the glittering achievement of Lee Kuan Yew and his chosen successors in raising per capita GDP to some US$55,000, are resentments over rising inequality and a sense of identity loss, with Singaporean citizens now less than two-thirds of the island’s 5.5 million residents.

Lee’s tough-minded and blunt views on international strategy made him a darling of conservatives in the Western world, who overlooked his domestic restrictions on free expression and the corporatist economics of high mandatory savings funnelled into state investment funds (which were not always well-invested).

Yet Singapore remains unpopular in its closest region, one reason why it maintains the best-equipped and most battle-ready armed forces in Southeast Asia.

It is resented not just for its success, but for the reason that part of the success has come from exploiting the weaknesses of its neighbours. Singapore is regarded as clean on corruption, but possibly $200 billion in corrupt earnings from Indonesia is held in its banks. Singapore was the conduit of choice for the Myanmar military and its business cronies when sanctions held.

Recently even Australia has been querying the use of Singapore as a pathway for profit shifting, though Australian businesses and institutions find the island a comfortable regional base and source of partnerships, and the two peoples, with comparable hybrid immigrant popular cultures, get along well.

So where does Singapore go from here? One reason for the question is the zig-zagging path of Lee Kuan Yew himself, usually defined as commendable “pragmatism”.

His background made him a chameleon. His wealthy Straits Chinese family gave him a sense of non-British identity. Working for three years for the Japanese state news agency Domei during the wartime occupation he perhaps learned a lot about media control. Then he became Harry Lee, the Cambridge and Inns of Court barrister. Moving into politics he enlisted Leftists as allies, then crushed them mercilessly.

In office he stressed English language, then Mandarin. Races were ranked as “hard” and “soft”. The promotion of “Asian values” waxed and waned as the Western economic model was seen as in decline or revival. Population growth was discouraged, then promoted as wealthier Singaporeans showed unwillingness to propagate their genes. Strict morality was eased to accommodate a synthetic version of Bugis Street, the old transvestite hangout, and two lavish casinos to capture more of Asia’s stray money.

No doubt Singapore will continue to go with the global and regional trade winds.

Internally, its system and political culture seem ripe for change. As expatriate Singaporean writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan wrote in Foreign Policy this week, the island’s younger and educated people are no longer inclined to accept Lee’s 1960s statement that “Poetry is a luxury we cannot afford.”

Hamish McDonald is Journalist-in-Resident at the Australian National University’sCollege of Asia & the Pacific, and a former regional editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Assess Lee Kuan Yew? Which one? -- New Mandala

Assess Lee Kuan Yew? Which one? -- New Mandala
MICHAEL BARR, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR – 25 MARCH 2015

To be both fair and informative in writing an assessment of Lee Kuan Yew requires a level of detachment that seems to be uncommon. Certainly his devotees, whether in Singapore or overseas, don’t usually come close to achieving it as they echo versions of Lee’s own story of how he took the country ‘from Third World to First’, often taking umbrage at those who are more critical. For those of us who are, indeed, more critical, the temptation is to focus on the Lee Kuan Yew who engaged in ‘brass knuckle politics’, and ignore the achievements. Many of us have friends who have suffered brutality at his hands – or who have been intimidated or suffered discrimination by the system he put in place. It is not easy to put such personal connections aside and give credit where credit is due. Yet despite these burdens, I am pleased to say that this is a temptation in which critics have not generally indulged for a couple of decades now.

At the time of writing it is now a few days since Lee died and while the devotees have been as adoring and banal as one might fear, his critics have been consistent in recognising his formidable achievements. Their (our) record of even-handedness in this regard is only partly inspired by respect for the dead and for his family. Rather it is a recognition of the complexity of this man. As much as some of us might prefer not to articulate it, he was, in all the conventional senses of the use of the term, ‘a great man’ with a long list of achievements to his name.

His critics might (and do) quibble that he did not do this on his own; that he was the leader of a team of talented men (women generally did not need to apply). And this is indisputable.

We complain that the self-serving narrative of his success would have us believe that he built it from ‘a fetid swamp’ (to quote Greg Sheridan in The Australian a few days ago) and we know full well that this is just plain wrong. He and his colleagues had a lot of valuable material to work with: much of it a legacy of British rule (e.g. the administrative system, the Naval Base and English as the lingua franca); some a gift of nature (such as the port); or the luck of geography (being on the Straits of Malacca, near a rising East Asia).

We complain about a long list of seemingly unintended consequences for those who have been left behind by Singapore’s success or crushed by the dominant elite, and we rightly fear that many of these consequences are not as unintended as they appear at first glance – that they are, in fact, implicitly intended and explicitly accepted as part of the deal.

Yet I cannot think of a single critic who denies his record as a successful builder and who doesn’t feel obliged to put on record some recognition of his achievements. I just wish that those of his devotees who know better could find the honesty to recognise his failings so that more casual followers of public affairs would have a chance of reaching a more balanced perspective.

With this preamble behind me, I would now like to reproduce an interview I did with Zarina Hussain of the BBC last week, a few days before Lee died. Zarina used half-a-dozen sentences of the interview in a piece titled ‘How Lee Kuan Yew engineered Singapore’s economic miracle’, which was published on the BBC website, but most of it has not been reported. I have just tidied up some of the grammar.

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Zarina Hussain (ZH):      In your view, what’s been the best economic policies from Lee Kuan Yew’s years as prime minister, which have vastly contributed to Singapore’s economic success and how have they raised Singapore’s profile from a third-world country to a first-class player it is today?

Michael D Barr (MDB):   Lee Kuan Yew was no economist, and the real innovative thinking done on the economic front was done by others. Lee had the good sense to follow good advice, and the political ability and will to implement good advice, even if it was unpopular in the short term and brought a lot of immediate hardship. Not everything went well. His government created an unnecessary recession in the 1980s when they suddenly jacked up wages and salaries by 20%, but they got a lot more right than wrong.

If Lee personally had any direct economic initiatives that he can be said to really ‘own’ it is in positioning little Singapore to capitalise on the advantages of its strategic position at the southern end of the Straits of Malacca and near East Asia. This was critical. It also rested on some lucky timing. If Singapore had gained independence and Lee had been Prime Minister at a time when either Japan or China – particularly China – was already at the peak of its game, i.e. if either had already ‘risen’, there would have been not such an important place for Singapore.

Singapore had the chance to get a terrific leg up by being able to turn to capitalism three decades before China did. Without that head start, independent Singapore would have been nothing more than an entrepôt – a middle man between East Asia and the Middle East/Europe/India – just like it had been as a colony. It still would have been a remarkably important entrepôt because it would still have been sitting astride the Straits of Malacca, through which most of the world’s shipping passes. But it would never have been able to develop a manufacturing base or position itself as a financial hub.

But the fact is that these stars were aligned for Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew, more than anyone else, recognised this and set out to capitalise on it. Malaysia and Indonesia had the same opportunities but were not able to capitalise on them. Singapore under Lee’s leadership took trick after trick, and sucked all the strategic advantage of being in the Straits of Malacca to itself.

Hence Lee has always taken a very personal and direct interest in the Port of Singapore, Changi Airport, and Singapore Airlines. He intervened very directly to see that these were built up and maintained, because they were the key to capitalising on Singapore’s strategic position. Lee was also personally responsible for correctly foreseeing the rise of China in the early 1980s before anyone else did and positioning Singapore to take advantage of it – just as he had done everything he could in the 1960s to take advantage of the rise of Japan, when this was a deeply unpopular thing to be talking about in Singapore and Southeast Asia because of Japan’s war record. It is not a bad record, all in all.

ZH:      And in your view, what have been the worst economic policies, which ones are you most critical of, which in your view, have led to setbacks to the Singapore economy?

MDB:   It depends on when you consider he bowed out. If we only consider the period in which he was Prime Minister, then his greatest economic failing was a political one: his failure to keep Singapore in Malaysia and to turn Malaysia into Singapore’s hinterland.

But leaving this aside – and also acknowledging that he turned Singapore into a stand-alone economy that flourished without Malaysia and streaked ahead of it – the greatest economic failure of his prime ministership was the recession of the 1980s, which was totally government-made and caused a lot of pain.

I would also like to point to a lot of pain that was caused by the social unfairness of a lot of his government’s economic initiatives. There were a lot of economic losers in Singapore – especially among those with poor English or no English.  But he wouldn’t see this as a failure. He saw it as just a side-effect to be dealt with politically. And this is what he did, very effectively.

Perhaps his biggest long term failure was the inadequate steps taken to move the Singapore economy out of its 1970s mode of export-oriented industrialisation, and into new models that relied less on cheap labour, cheap land and cheap exports – into a knowledge and service-based economy with a vibrant external investment arm. They did try to do this, and Lee was behind these efforts, but they were hamstrung by the political model that Lee had created that relied upon tight government control of almost everything – and tight family control. His family sits at the heart of the engine of Singapore economy. Lee and his colleagues and successors could not bring themselves to loosen up their tight control of either the politics or the economy. Sure, Singapore invests heaps overseas and receives lots of investment, but the government is the gatekeeper at every front. Hence under the system he set up and managed, government investment arms have become major sources of domestic political patronage and they have had to carry some appallingly bad investment and management decisions, the most spectacular of which have been the direct responsibility of Lee Kuan Yew’s close relatives!

ZH:      What’s your picture of Singapore post-LKY? Will there be an economic divide, will that shatter investors’ confidence in Singapore?

MDB:   Politically Singapore has been in a post-LKY era since his son pushed him out of Cabinet in 2011. Even for five or more years before that Lee has been a marginal figure in real political terms. I would have to say that since about 2005 or 2006 the achievements and mistakes of the government have been owned increasingly by Lee Hsien Loong rather than Lee Kuan Yew. And yes, part of this record has been increasing disparity between rich and poor, the squeezing of the lower middle class and the working class, and the huge error of drastically increasing the immigration intake, beginning in 2005. These decisions are all connected and at the heart of them were people close to Lee Kuan Yew and who were effectively appointed by Lee – and Lee vocally supported these decisions – but to be fair, Lee himself was only passively and selectively involved by 2005 and 2006 and really can’t be blamed. These mistakes are really down to his successors.

ZH:      How do you see Singapore in the next 10 years, without the presence of Lee Kuan Yew in the shadows?

MDB:   Unless something drastic happens there will be a steady loosening up and fragmentation of the system he put in place. I don’t foresee a sudden shift, but gradually the political system and the economic regime he put in place are going to unwind and become less and less effective. This is partly because of changing circumstances over which Singapore has no or little control, but also because Lee has left in place a broken system of elite regeneration.

In short, his system only works with someone as smart and ruthless as Lee Kuan Yew at the top. My fear is that his successors might be able to bring themselves to be as ruthless as Lee, but not as smart. This would be the worst of all worlds.

A better scenario would see a more flexible and open political system that is less ruthless and has much more public accountability. This would enable the system to work without finding a new Lee Kuan Yew. I see this as being critical for the future of Singapore as a nice place to live and work, since it is perfectly obvious that there is no one, including the current prime minister, capable of filling Lee Kuan Yew’s shoes.

Associate Professor Michael D. Barr from the School of International Studies, Flinders University is the author of ‘The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence’ and ‘Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs behind the Man.’

Lee Kuan Yew’s political legacy – a matter of trust | New Mandala

Lee Kuan Yew’s political legacy – a matter of trust | New Mandala

BRIDGET WELSH, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

24 MARCH 2015

As Singaporeans mourn their charismatic leader Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), whose political acumen, drive and ideas defined the young nation and played a major role in its successful development, attention turns to assessment. Moments of transition always bring reflection, and this is especially the case with the passing of the man who both personified and defined Singapore. The fact that LKY has passed on in the pivotal year of the nation celebrating the country’s 50^th anniversary only serves to reinforce the need for review.

There is good reason to acknowledge the accolades of a man who has been labeled as one of Asia’s most influential leaders. Most of the media, especially in the government-linked media of Singapore, lay out these reasons well. LKY was a force to be reckoned with, a complex man who made no excuses in his views and was direct in stating his opinions. He trusted few, but chose to collaborate with those who shared his hard work ethic with talent and ideas to develop the busy port of Singapore into a safe dynamic cosmopolitan city-state. He will rightly be remembered for not only putting Singapore on the world map, but as a model that is admired and respected by many the world over.

LKY was a man who was respected, but importantly not loved by all. He used fear to stay in power. From the inception of Singapore’s independence – when it was expelled from Malaysia – the ideas of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘survival’ were used to justify decisions. He promoted the idea that Singapore had to have a strong armed forces, requiring national service in 1967, to protect itself as a nation surrounded by the perceived threat of its Malay neighbors. The enemies outside were matched by those inside, who had to be displaced and in some cases detained.  Among the most controversial were the arrests of men labeled as communists in Operation Coldstore of 1963 and Operation Spectrum of 1987 (a.k.a. the ‘Marxist Conspiracy’) that targeted social activists who promoted greater social equality and were seen as challenging LKY’s People’s Action Party’s (PAP) authority. Two other round-ups occurred with Operation Pecah (Split) in 1966, which coincided with the year of the arrest of Dr. Chia Thye Poh who was held under detention and restriction until 1997, and the arrests of the ‘Eurocommunists’ in 1976-77. Many others from opposition politics, business to academia faced the wrath for challenging and questioning LKY, his PAP and the politicized decisions of its institutions, castigated in the government controlled media, removed from position, forced to live in exile and, in some cases, sued and bankrupted. In the relatively small city state, it did not take much to instill a political culture of fear by making a few examples.

A main point of contention goes that LKY sparred with Western critics over democracy and human rights, with LKY dismissing these ideas as not part of ‘Asia’s values.’ The debate was never about differences in values, but the justification of holding power in the hands of a few for nearly five decades. Singapore’s political model is at its foundation about the elites, with Lee, his family and loyalists at the core. In recent years, reports in Singapore have highlighted a growing trust deficit in the PAP government that LKY founded. The real deficit that defined LKY and became embedded within the party he molded is that he never fundamentally trusted his people.

The group that received the special focus of LKY’s distrust was the Malay population, who now comprise over 10% of the country’s population. Even as LKY matured as a politician, he continued to reinforce negative stereotypes of this community that rioted over their grievances in 1950, 1964 and 1969 when LKY was in his early years in power, and with whom he expressed hard judgments about their religion, Islam. This distrust was shaped in part by a worldview that was not only shaped by his early experiences in political life but had sharp racial cleavages, drew from eugenics and believed in a clear social order. Part of LKY’s outlook prioritized women as homemakers and disparaged single women who opted not to marry or follow a career – another group similar to Malays that faced discrimination within LKY’s Singapore.

In the heyday of Singapore’s economic miracle, the 1970s through the 1990s, the LKY PAP government worked to win over the trust of its people. It did so by providing for the basic welfare of its citizens, with an impressive housing program, affordable food prices, a living wage, job security, safety, education and opportunity. This involved hard work of LKY’s founding team of PAP cadre, as well as the sacrifice of ordinary Singaporeans. It also reflected the wise realization of LKY that fear was not enough to stay in power. There needed to be a healthy balance of deliverable. The LKY decades of economic growth translated into real rewards – at least through the 1980s.

Singapore’s trajectory of sharing the benefits of development has followed a pattern of diminishing returns, as the country now boasts the highest per capita of millionaires and is the world’s most expensive city, with a large number its citizens unable to save and afford the lifestyle promised in the nation’s early narrative. As much as LKY deserves credit for Singapore’s success, he also should be seen to be part of today’s shortcomings. Elitism has breed arrogance, and a distance between those in power and those governed. Most of the new leaders of the PAP have come from subsequent wealthy generations that do not fully understand the sacrifices of the country’s working poor – shocking in number – and the obstacles elderly and young people face in an era of high costs. Years of following the LKY’s example and being told that the PAP is made up of the ‘best and brightest’ has imbued a mindset of superiority, a lack of empathy, and frequent dismissal of difference in engagement with the public.

While LKY’s son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has worked to win over support, he has suffered consecutive drops of support in the two elections he has led since he assumed office, failing to match the 75% popular vote height of the predecessor Goh Chok Tong in 2001. Unlike in the information controlled era of his father, Lee Hsien Loong is not able to effectively censor and limit public discussions in today’s wired and connected Singapore.  His recent expansion of social services and incentive packages that provide small sums for pensioners, modest support for health and childcare and tax reductions for the middle class are a drop in the bucket for the growing grievances and costs faced by ordinary citizens.

This has to do in part with the challenge Lee Hsien Loong faces in dealing with his father’s legacy. In 2007 LKY claimed that he governed without ideology. This was not quite true. The ideological foundation of LKY’s pragmatic tenure was materialism. This obsession with money, saving it and forcing the public to save it in rigid regulated ways, assuring that government funds were only given to those ‘worthy’ and loyal and defining the value of the performance of his government ministers by pegging their salaries to growth numbers comprised the lifeblood of LKY’s state. With annual ‘bonuses’ to perform, there is a focus on short-term gains rather than long-term investments. The irony is that it is not even clear how much money the government of Singapore and its linked companies actually have. Singapore is one of the few countries in the world that does not follow the International Monetary Fund guidelines on its budget reporting. It also does not transparently report losses in many of the financial accounts of the government linked companies (GLCs). Lee Hsien Loong has had to tackle head-on the ingrained pattern of limited government spending on social welfare and services, as he attempts to move away from his father’s restrictive parsimony and secretive mindset that originated from a lack of trust in people.

Lee Hsien Loong also has to address the problems of a government dominated economy. Singapore Inc. emerged out of the political economy LKY put in place, with the government and its linked companies controlling over half the country’s economy and undercutting almost all domestic business. LKY did not trust local capital, and did not want to strengthen an alternative power center to his own. As such, Singapore’s economy is not a genuinely competitive one. It favors big business, especially property developers, and those allied with government rather than independent entrepreneurs. Those in the system have apparently disproportionately benefited from it, although the exact amounts and assets remain unknown. The accumulated assets of individuals remain hidden as the estate tax was removed in 2008. What is known is that workers have limited rights in the LKY-shaped political economy. A recent example is the sexual harassment bill passed in parliament that excludes employer liability. The harsh response to the bus driver strike in in 2012 is another. Much is made about the limited corruption of Singapore, but few appreciate that the country ranks high on the Economist crony-capitalism index, an important outgrowth of the government dominance of the economy. The ties between companies and government are close, at times with government and family members on their boards and a revolving door that never really closes.

Singapore’s economy also favors foreigners. LKY was to start this trend, with the appeal to outsiders for capital rather than a focus on domestic business. Foreigners may have been easier to engage, as they could always be kicked out. Foreign investment has been extremely important in Singapore’s growth numbers initially in manufacturing and later in services. To maintain global competitiveness, keep wages low and maintain high growth numbers, Singapore also turned to foreign labor – cheap workers to staff their construction sectors and to work as domestic help and foreign talent to bring in ideas and the occasional sports medal. This prioritization of outsiders has fostered resentment. When LKY assumed office he worked to force a nation, but with his passing many in Singapore feel the government he left behind is working for others and undermining the fabric of the nation. The crowded trains, strain on services and displacement of Singaporeans in the job market and advancement have angered many, who now see LKY’s legacy as one that in fact left many Singaporeans vulnerable and worried about survival.

No one can take away LKY’s contributions. He lived a long meaningful life, and shaped the lives of all Singaporeans. This does not mean that there is agreement on what he left behind. Singapore now faces the challenge of moving beyond LKY’s ideas and shaping a more promising future for all of its citizens. An integral part of this dynamic will be moving away from fear, promoting more effective policies for inclusion in the economy and society and building trust. It starts with placing more trust in Singaporeans.

It is arguably the latter that is the hardest. LKY lived in an era where societies trusted their leaders. He was given the benefit of the doubt. The PAP remains a relatively closed institution, with the distrust of those not inside deeply embedded. Today in the age of social media and instant messaging there is not as much leeway to work behind closed doors. There is an urgent need to forge genuine dialogue, connectivity and understanding that moves beyond materialism, and reignites the sense of belonging that LKY forged in his early years.

Singapore today has become a more politically divided nation, with those who strongly defend LKY’s incumbent government, die-hard opponents and the majority in the middle. As the country marks its 50^th year it moves toward a different narrative, the task at hand is to forge a new Singapore story, one in which LKY is a valued part of its past, but not a constraint on the dreams and aspirations of Singaporeans’ future.

Bridget Welsh is a Senior Research Associate of the Center for East Asia Democratic Studies of the National Taiwan University where she conducts research on democracy and politics in Southeast Asia.

Singapore’s ‘Battle for Merger’ revisited | New Mandala

Singapore’s ‘Battle for Merger’ revisited | New Mandala

 

POH SOO KAI, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

3 DECEMBER 2014

The merger issue

2015 is the fiftieth anniversary of Singapore’s separation after almost two years of being part of the Federation of Malaysia (16 September 1963 – 9 August 1965). The event is marked as the day when the island gained independence. The British colonial rulers formally relinquished its residual power over Singapore’s defence, foreign affairs and internal security to the newly-formed Federation of Malaysia when merger came into effect. Reunification was the aspiration of its people as the island was severed in 1946 by the British after being part of the Straits Settlements for 120 years, save for the Japanese Occupation (1942-45).

However the merger scheme which Lee Kuan Yew’s PAP government concluded with the Federation of Malaya government’s Tunku Abdul Rahman was an outright failure. It is thus curious that for the official celebration of SG 50, the PAP government should choose to highlight the 12 radio broadcasts that Lee Kuan Yew as prime minister made between 13 September and 9 October 1961 which was published as The Battle for Merger (1962). The book was reprinted in 2014, with much official hype but no new insights. The deputy prime minister and concurrently coordinating minister for national security and minister for home affairs who launched the reprint, stressed the importance of the PAP’s push for the 1963 merger thus:

It was a time when momentous decisions had to be made for Singapore. A wrong decision then would have been calamitous and Singapore might still be trying to shake off the dire effects today.

[Ministry of Home Affairs, Speech by Mr Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs, at the launch of the reprint of “The Battle for Merger”.]

The 1963 merger was a wrong decision. The disastrous outcome was foreseen by the opposition Barisan Sosialis.  We wanted reunification with Malaya, but NOT on the terms that Lee obtained. Those simply could not work. They did not address the fundamental ethnic issue which was handled differently in Malaya and Singapore. The Alliance, the ruling party which dominated Malaysian politics, was an alliance of ethnic-based political parties. It had control of Singapore’s internal security through the internal Security Act (ISA) which provided for detention without trial. The PAP had accepted that Singapore would have fewer seats than its population size warranted, weakening its representation in the Federal government.

Lee insisted that we ‘opposed merger’ fearing that we would be arrested and detained without trial by the Tunku as Malaysia’s prime minister. We countered with the declaration that Barisan leaders were willing to be arrested and imprisoned before merger took place. Contrary to the PAP’s proposals, we insisted that the people of Singapore should have the same rights and responsibilities as any other Malaysian citizen. The ‘autonomy’ in labour and education for Singapore which the PAP obtained was meaningless if the ISA was not abolished.

After Malaysia was formed on these faulty terms, the PAP found itself in the margins of Federal politics when the Tunku rejected its attempts to replace the MCA as his Chinese coalition partner.  The PAP then, in a volte-face, resorted to so-called championing of equal political rights for the Chinese.  Ethnic tensions were stoked in response by UMNO extremists championing Malay rights. Riots broke out in Singapore in 1964, and Separation came to be seen as the only way to avoid further outbreaks of ethnic-based violence.

The merger of Singapore into the larger Federation of Malaya with an entrenched rightwing government was introduced by the British, and rushed through to save Lee Kuan Yew’s political skin. The British were not prepared to give Singapore independence outside of merger with the Federation, fearing that its military bases on the island would be jeopardised if our genuine leftwing party won the 1963 election. Lee was keen on such a merger, expecting that the Tunku would act against the leftwing of his party. There was no vision of democracy or equality for the new society that was enunciated.

Lee had made clear to the British that should there be no role for him, he would not go into Malaysia. As prime minister since 1959, he threw everything he had to push for merger and to discredit his opposition as communists. Based on this charge, the PAP expelled its leftwing members, who then formed the Barisan Sosialis party led by Lim Chin Siong. The Internal Security Council, comprising of the Singapore, British and Federation of Malay governments, duly carried out Operation Coldstore on 2 February 1963 and subsequent weeks, with a total of 133 arrested.

Building up a reading list

Among those imprisoned in 1963, were individuals who refused to sign statements ‘renouncing’ or condemning communism – the only way to gain release. Dr Lim Hock Siew, imprisoned for almost twenty years, refused to sign a statement renouncing violence in 1975. He retorted that it was like asking him to announce that he would stop beating his wife, giving the impression that he was imprisoned for wife-beating. He would never lift a finger to justify his detention.

For more than twenty years following the release in 1982 of the last of the political prisoners then (save for Chia Thye Poh) we maintained silence about our wrongful imprisonment.  The political climate was stifling; we were warned of re-arrest should we ‘cause trouble’, which included maintaining contact with one another. There was also the need to focus on making a living. Only gradually were attempts made among ex-political prisoners to meet up socially.

Following The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998) , Said Zahari, who certainly did not have any communist links but was imprisoned for 17 years, published his autobiographical account Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir, and Tan Jing Quee co-edited (with Jomo KS) Comet in our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History;both accounts came out in 2001. They were spurred on by Lee’s narrative of his heroic deeds and flawless judgment, and demonising of his leftwing opponents as subversive communists at every turn.

 

The momentum grew with Tan Jing Quee and Michael Fernandez speaking about their imprisonment at an arts forum on Detention-Healing- Writing in 2006. Tan then come up with The Fajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore, (2010) and The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s. The two books, available in both English and Chinese, challenge the state bifurcation of English-speaking students as apolitical and Chinese-speaking as manipulated by the Malayan Communist Party. The book launches drew a capacity audience. The latter in particular was attended by about 300 elderly Chinese-speaking former political activists who for decades had hidden their past, even from their children and grandchildren, who accompanied them to the event.

The detainees of the 1950s and 1960s were not the only ones who began to find a voice.  A younger group of  lawyers, dramatists, political activists, and social and church workers arrested in Operation Spectrum in 1987 as ‘marxist conspirators’ had also started to stir. They connected with the 1963 and 1970s detainees to produceOur Thoughts Are Free: Poems and Prose on Imprisonment and Exile (2009). The next year, Teo Soh Lung (imprisoned without trial 21 May 1987-26 Sept 1987; 19 April 1988-1 June 1990) published Beyond the Blue Gate: Recollections of a Political Prisoner. At the book launch, Teo stated, ‘I call for the ISA to be abolished. The ISA and its predecessors have destroyed many lives from the time of the British to today.’

Since then, her comrades have put out collections of essays by Catholic church workers who were Operation Spectrum survivors,[i] and on Singapore’s political exiles from the 1970s[ii].

The growth of the social media, resulting in the proliferation of publishing outlets, made its impact during the campaign for the hotly-contested election of the president in August 2011. Citizen journalists,  invited to the debates, asked the candidates to state their position on the ISA. Former cabinet minister Tony Tan justified the legislation on grounds that terrorism is a real threat, which led Dr Lim Hock Siew to challenge him to repeat his statement so that they could meet in a court of law, and to call for an independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate the allegations against all ISA prisoners. His challenge is still on YouTube.

Operation Coldstore documents: Demanding accountability

Except for the 1990s, the ISA has been used in every decade in postwar Singapore. Operation Coldstore remains the most controversial, as it paved the way for the PAP’s unbroken rule and constitutes its founding myth of ‘riding the communist tiger’. What it did, in effect, was to eliminate Lim Chin Siong and the Barisan Sosialis from the 1963 general election. Lim had won the confidence not only of the Chinese-speaking labour unionists, but also the English-speaking left, mostly coming out from the University Socialist Club. I was one of them.

Documentary evidence from the colonial archives, analysed by historians such as TN Harper, Geoff Wade[iii] and PJ Thum[iv],  has shown that the British and the Federation governments were not going to accept a leftwing government in Singapore; they came to Lee’s rescue by abetting in Operation Coldstore. I too made a trip to the Kew Archives in the early 1990s.  There is insufficient evidence that Lim Chin Siong, the key target to be destroyed politically, was a member of the MCP—which did not stop the demonising of him as such in the 2014 Battle for Merger. Choice quotations from the Colonial Office include:

While we accept that Lim Chin Siong is a Communist, there is no evidence he is receiving orders from the CPM, Peking or Moscow. Our impression is that Lim is working very much on his own and that his primary objective is not the Communist millennium but to obtain control of the constitutional government of Singapore. It is far from certain that having obtained this objective Lim would necessarily prove a compliant tool of Peking or Moscow.[v]

Also, Lee was,

quite clearly attracted by the prospect of wiping out his main political opposition before the next Singapore elections…advocating a policy of provocation of Lim Chin Siong and his associates with a view to forcing them into unconstitutional action justifying their arrest. [vi]

The specific reason given for our arrests was that the Barisan was supplying arms and logistical support for the popular uprising led by Azahari in Brunei on 8 December 1962. The British had minuted how this charge was formulated:

Lee had in mind a statement calling for the crushing of the revolt pointing out that organisation, training and arms could not have been provided within the Borneo territories and drawing the conclusion that there must have been foreign intervention. As to arrests, Lee said that information about the recent contacts between Azahari and Lim Chin Siong coupled with Barisan Socialis’ statement giving open support for the revolutionaries provided a heaven-sent opportunity of justifying action against them.[vii]

Lim Chin Siong as Barisan leader had a meal in a restaurant with Azahari, leader of the socialist Partai Rakyat Brunei, who was stopping by Singapore, in full view of the head of Special Branch. Our statement of moral support for the Brunei popular uprising was no different from those that the Barisan had issued for other anti-colonial uprisings. Strangely for the danger we were alleged to pose in our fraternal relations with Azahari, our arrests were postponed for two months after the Brunei uprising as the Tunku and Lee could not agree on the list of detainees!

The authorities had indicated that they would produce evidence of our clandestine involvement in the Brunei uprising, but never did. I am still waiting.

Operation Coldstore was a set-up against Lee’s political opponents. On its fiftieth anniversary, I declared in the blurb of The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 Years:

I maintain that I was imprisoned for being part of a slate of left-wing anti-colonialists who were going to pose a challenge to Lee Kuan Yew in the election of 1963. The charges of communism and subversion, used to frame people like me, have simply been chanted repeatedly to this day. Our rejection of the charge has been ignored outright, without any attempt to supply evidence or specific details which we could answer.

To date, we have received only a non-reply, in the form of the re-printing of the Battle for Merger, the Cold War diatribe of the day. The government has to content itself with targeting school children and blitzing the mainstream media, using the same language and materials from half a century ago, and resurrecting the failed ‘merger’, implicitly to justify Coldstore, though the event itself is not ever mentioned. The impression given is that with the radio talks the PAP won the hearts and minds of the people. If that had been the case, Coldstore would have been unnecessary.

Even more impossible to justify than our arrests is the length of the imprisonments. Detention orders were renewed every two years, without any limit at the minister’s pleasure. Lim Hock Siew would have received at least 8 extensions of such orders under section 8A of the ISA, 1960, a printed form with the name of the detainee and date typed in. How many such orders would Chia Thye Poh, – imprisoned on 29 October 1996, restricted to Sentosa island from 17 May 1989, then to Singapore from 28 November 1992 and freed of restrictions on 27 November 1998, – have received?

The present PAP leaders have chosen to identify themselves with the gross injustices using the ISA inflicted by their party elders, and to cling to a narrative of history that has been seriously questioned.

Dr Poh Soo Kai was Assistant Secretary-General of Barisan Sosialis. He was imprisoned twice under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) which allows for detention without trial for a total of 17 years by Singapore’s PAP government.

[i] Fong Hoe Fang, ed. That We May Dream Again (2009)

[ii] Teo Soh Lung and Low Yit Keng, eds. Escape from the lion’s paw : reflections of Singapore’s political exiles (2009)

[iii] Geoff Wade, ‘Operation Coldstore: A Key Event in the Creation of Modern Singapore’, in The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating Fifty years, eds. Poh Soo Kai, Tan Kok Fang, Hong Lysa (2013).

[iv] Thum Pingtjin, “‘The Fundamental Issue is Anti-colonialism, not Merger’: Singapore’s ‘Progressive Left’ , Operation Coldstore and the Creation of Malaysia”, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore Working Paper series no. 211, November 2013.

[v] High Commissioner, Singapore to Secretary of State, 8 September 1962, CO 1030/1159 in TN Harper, ‘ Lim Chin Siong and the “Singapore Story”’ in Comet in Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History, eds. Tan Jing Quee and Jomo KS (2001), p. 41.

[vi]  High Commissioner Singapore to Secretary of State, CO 1030/998, 28 April 1962, cited in Tan Jing Quee, ‘Merger and the Decimation of the Left-Wing in Singapore,’ inFajar Generation: The University Socialist Club and the Politics of Postwar Malaya and Singapore, eds. Poh Soo Kai, Tan Jing Quee and Koh Kay Yew (2010)  p. 283.

[vii] High Commissioner to Secretary of State CO 1030/1160, no 572, 10 December 1962.