One of a Kind (2nd Edition)

MERGER AND SEPARATION

TWO

Particularly incensed was UMNO’s Chief Publicity Officer, Syed Ja’afar Hasan Albar, later

UMNO Secretary General. A migrant to Malaysia from Indonesia just before WWII, he was

more ‘bumiputera’ than many indigenous Malays.

With a personal animus against Mr. Lee, he

was to play a provocative role in the events leading to the expulsion of Singapore. Besides Syed

Ja’afar Hasan Albar, it also happened that Malaysia’s Finance Minister, Mr. Tan Siew Sin, of the

Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), the Chinese element of the ruling coalition in Malaysia,

not only engineered onerous financial obligations on Singapore as the price of merger, but also

turned on Mr. Lee Kuan Yew seemingly because he felt that the latter was upsetting the MCA

applecart in Malaysia.

But the underlying fear was real enough: if the PAP’s non-communal politics could secure the

support of the Singapore Malays to the total rejection of UMNO’s affiliate in Singapore, it

could also, sooner or later, influence the voting pattern in Malaysia if the PAP unleashed itself

in Malaysian politics.

IV. EXPULSION

The drama played out over the 23 months during which Singapore was part of the merger. It

led to deadly riots in Singapore in 1964, instigated from across the Causeway; to proposals for

the Singapore government leadership to be gaoled; to the formation by the PAP in conjunction

with non-Alliance parties in Malaysia of a Malaysian Solidarity Convention as an opposition

bloc against the ruling alliance in Malaysia on a platform of racial equality; to the consideration

of various ideas to marginalise Singapore’s participation in Federal politics and economy; and

to the final decision to expel Singapore, thereby keeping the PAP leadership out of Malaysia.

Singapore’s ouster eliminated the main threat to the Federal Government, which was the

assault on the bumiputera policy and the prospect of ethnic polarisation. As to the security

threat that communists posed through Singapore—the concern which had tipped the Tunku’s

decision in favour of accepting Singapore into Malaysia—the PAP’s massive win in the 21

September, 1963 general elections, confirmed by the defeat of the communist open-front

Barisan Sosialis’ candidate Ong Chang Sam in a straight fight against the PAP’s Lee Khoon

Choy in the Hong Lim by-elections of 10

July, 1964, had demonstrated that the communist

threat out of Singapore had terminally declined.

Traumatic as the expulsion was to be for Singapore, the peaceful parting of ways was the

outcome of a relatively mature approach by politicians of great stature on both sides. Singapore

was fortunate in having to deal with Tunku Abdul Rahman and Malaysia’s Minister of Home

Affairs and Minister of Justice, Ismail bin Abdul Razak, at a time when the norm in developing

countries was to settle political scores with violence and non-constitutional measures. The

details of the separation were handled between Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tun Abdul

Razak and Singapore’s Finance Minister, Dr. Goh Keng Swee, who was assisted by Singapore’s

Minister for Law, Mr. E. W. Barker. Details were kept secret even from inner circles, including