TUNKU Abdul Rahman, Malayan nationalist, leader of the Malays, was among those on the platform when Lee Kuan Yew, on 21 November, 1954, proposed the formation of the People’s Action Party. The whole of the Malayan Peninsula was then under colonial rule, and few people at that meeting thought it possible that within three years the Tunku would be the elected Prime Minister of an independent Malaya. Lee’s hand is revealed in the PAP Manifesto, which the inaugural meeting adopted, and which still guides the party in principle.
The basic aim of the PAP was to secure national freedom without the use of force. While an appeal was specifically addressed to workers —“We must reduce inequalities of wealth and ensure that workers by hand and brain get the full fruits of their industry and enterprise”— there is no reference in the Manifesto to socialism. This was deliberately omitted so that every citizen, rich and poor, employer and worker, could look upon the PAP as a nationalist movement. “We are also prepared to co-operate with other political parties genuinely interested in achieving real, not spurious, independence for our country,” stated the Manifesto.
The PAP’s inaugural meeting was the biggest political rally since 1948. The Straits Times reported that the theme of the meeting was independence immediately. “There could be no compromise on that,” said Lee Kuan Yew. “We reject the Singapore and Federation constitutions because ultimate power and control still rest in the colonial power and not in the hands of the people. No constitution which curtails the sovereignty of the people can be acceptable to us.”
Lee complained that the arbitrary powers the Emergency Regulations gave to the Executive made it impossible for serious nationalist movements to exist. He gave the PAP’s main objectives: to end colonialism and to establish an independent national State of Malaya comprising “the territories now known as the Federation of Malaya and the Colony of Singapore”; to create a democratic unitary government of Malaya based on universal adult suffrage of all those born in Malaya or who adopt Malayan nationality; to abolish the unjust inequalities of wealth and opportunity “inherent in the present system”; to establish an economic order which would give to all citizens the right to work “and the full economic returns for their labour and skill; to ensure a decent living and social security to all those who through sickness, infirmity or old age can no longer work; to infuse into the people of Malaya a spirit of national unity, self-respect and self-reliance and to inspire them with a sense of endeavour in the creation of a prosperous, stable and just society.”
Tunku Abdul Rahman attended as president of the United Malays National Organization. He promised UMNO’s full support. Sir Tan Cheng Lock, president of the Malayan Chinese Association, was also there. He said that the PAP could count upon the MCA.
Nobody has ever denied that communists then stood shoulder to shoulder with the nationalists within the PAP. Lee Kuan Yew was aware of this. But, from the start, he made his position clear. He was willing to form a united front with anyone prepared to fight with him, constitutionally, to rid Singapore and Malaya of British control. Lee will not listen to British protests that Britain never intended to challenge independence, and wished only to bring it about realistically and practically. Not believing this, Lee and his party adopted a fighting posture, and he still feels that the British would never have handed over complete government of the island to the local people had they not, in effect, forced the British to do so.
Lee Kuan Yew knew better than most that when he accepted communist support he was riding a tiger, and he was prepared for the insults and attacks which followed in the Western press. It was this decision, and his subsequent careful, not always head-on, tackling of other problems, successfully, it transpired, which annoyed the which-side-are-you-on? type of politican, and caused Time magazine to refer to him as Shifty Lee.
Lee expected the communists within the party ranks to make attempts to capture the party and he will agree that once they nearly did. What might have happened to the PAP had not Lim Yew Hock, then Chief Minister, stepped in and arrested half the PAP Committee on the grounds that they were communists, will never be known. Lee was confident they would have been out-manoeuvred, and they were, when he refused to carry on as Secretary-General unless he was backed up by a committee in which he could have full confidence. Lee was never prepared to become the tool of the communists, as David Marshall, the unfortunate first Chief Minister, became until the communists discarded him as a useless instrument in the 1963 general elections. Forsaken by the communists, Marshall lost his deposit, faced with the sad truth that his own supporters totalled no more than 416 voters.
Probably the only non-communist ever to have sat astride the communist tiger in a nationalist movement and survived, and beaten the communists to their knees with a policy of open confrontation, Lee knew that in the end the communists were bound to clash with the non-communist nationalists. He feared this might happen after the formation of Malaysia, not before, when the communists pretending to be socialists might be firmly entrenched. To his amazement and relief, the communists challenged him while Singapore technically remained a British possession with self-government. They mistimed and misjudged, and one of the reasons was the expulsion from the party of the former treasurer, Australian-trained accountant, Ong Eng Guan.
After capturing the city council, the PAP made Ong Eng Guan mayor of the city. Ong was Chinese-educated, and at that stage the PAP had few Chinese-educated leaders. They deliberately built up Ong to serve the party, and they thought him capable of carrying out party instructions. Instead, they built a monster. Not to put too fine a point on it, Ong became crazed with power, daily issued a stream of orders which stunned everyone, except childish extremists, with whom he became popular, and in the process all but brought the city facilities to a complete standstill. Misguidedly, the PAP tried to capitalize on his popularity, and when, in 1959, they won the general elections and formed the government, Lee Kuan Yew made Ong Minister for National Development, gave him control of city installations, and entrusted him with the acute problem of providing the people with houses. This was a major blunder.
Ong was not fit for the task, and he failed to erect a single dwelling. In a public inquiry, a judge described him as a man capable of telling an untruth when it suited him, and evidence revealed that he had given jobs to his friends. In the end, Lee took over, and within a short while the Government achieved international fame for the speed with which thousands of low-cost housing units were erected. But the damage had been done.
Angry at his dismissal, Ong attacked Lee’s leadership, taking an extreme Left line. Expelled from the party, Ong Eng Guan resigned his Assembly seat and, promising his Chinatown voters heaven on earth, soundly and triumphantly defeated the PAP candidate. It was at this point that the pro-communists in the PAP made their fatal mistake. They thought that Ong and his new party might snatch the extreme Left initiative from them. They threatened Lee, demanding that he should follow their line. Lee refused and, in another by-election, the pro-communists threw their weight at the last moment behind David Marshall, then chairman of the Workers’ Party. Lee was to be taught a lesson.
By a narrow majority, Marshall was elected to the Assembly again and the pro-communists waited confidently for Lee Kuan Yew to give way. Lee stood fast. He declined to be intimidated. Instead he accepted the challenge in the Assembly, and called for a vote of confidence. Pro-communists, waverers and opportunists within the PAP abstained: the national united front was broken. Thirteen of the PAP’s thirty-nine Assemblymen resigned or were expelled. Shortly afterwards, the deserters formed the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front), and the antagonists stood where the lines were drawn.
For two years the Right votes of Lim Yew Hock kept Lee Kuan Yew in power, but in the end it was Lee himself who decided the date of the general elections. Seldom in parliamentary history could there have been a more masterly performance. With supreme confidence, having helped to bring about merger and Malaysia as dreamed of more than a decade before, Lee Kuan Yew went to the people seeking approval to continue his work.
In the 1950s the PAP, believing firmly in the need for an anti-colonial united front with communist elements, was being severely criticized. Australian journalists and politicians, convinced that Lee was playing a dangerous game and suspicious of the man himself, joined in the criticism. Said one Australian: “Lee walks like a duck. He quacks like a duck. He is a duck.” Lee does walk in a deliberate and distinctive manner: he puts his feet down carefully, and his body, like his whole personality, moves forward aggressively. But he is no duck. And neither does he deserve to be described as unfavourably disposed towards Australia or Australians. He clashed with a couple of Australian journalists, with one as a result of persistent questioning in depth, and he did remark angrily and loudly that he thought that certain Australians were interfering in the formation of Malaysia. But to pretend that he is anti-Australian is not to understand a man fully aware of the political and military realities of life. Lee is pro-Asian, and he is politically inclined towards neutrality, coexistence and the need for smaller states to work together as much as possible to prevent themselves from being exploited by the larger powers. He gets along well, in consequence, with Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia. This does not make him unfriendly towards Australia, or any other country. If Lee considers British diplomats, merchants, and journalists to be smoother, more polished, more confident, and less brash than the pushful Australian, this may be because of his long association with the British. At Cambridge the kindness and learning of his tutors and lecturers left upon him an enduring impression of what is best in Britain.
No man is more conscious than Lee Kuan Yew of the impact of communism upon the largely Chinese population in Singapore. He studied communism carefully during his student days in London and he finally concluded, after deep thought, that this ruthless discipline was unnecessary for the development of Malaya. He was willing to listen to arguments that in one form or another communism might be suited to China or the Soviet Union. But not to Malaya. He thought that for many reasons it was the duty of the English-educated in Malaya to assist in bringing about real social cohesion and to lead the fight against colonialism. At the same time it was necessary for them to be on their guard against communism. He argued that, whatever the rights and wrongs of communism, no one could deny the tremendous appeal it made upon Asian masses. He told students in London in 1950 that they could not insulate themselves from the nationalist revolts that had swept the European powers from Asia. They had to participate. They had to provide a reasonable alternative to communism. Lee has always possessed this sense of history, of being able to look forward as well as to remember the past. His awareness of political developments and trends in the newly emergent Afro-Asian countries is based less upon doctrine than upon a study of events. If he has a fault in this direction, it is his anxiety constantly to “analyse the current situation”. This is an absorbing but not always rewarding occupation. Yet, if criticized, he could with justification claim many brilliant perceptions, many instances when his forecast of likely developments has been proved correct.
Lee’s deep interest in foreign affairs, therefore, is understandable. Once he had become Prime Minister and was firmly in the saddle, and work had begun on the more pressing domestic problems, Lee went abroad, making contact with other Afro-Asian leaders, creating friendships, explaining Singapore and Malaysia, exchanging ideas, learning, gaining more knowledge. On these tours he had long and useful talks with Nehru, Ne Win, Sihanouk, Nasser, Tito, Ayub Khan, Sukarno, and a host of others.
Lee Kuan Yew is Secretary-General of the People’s Action Party, as Mao Tse-tung is Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Both give direction to their respective parties. Lee presents the annual report drawn up under his direction by the staff. By 1967 the PAP had become a cadre party, with a strong headquarters and a branch in all fifty-eight constituencies. Total membership of the party is in the region of 35,000 of whom an undisclosed number are cadres. Only cadres can vote, and take part in certain meetings. Cadres are obliged to serve an apprenticeship as ordinary members. At headquarters there is an organizing secretary with a full-time paid staff of twenty. Each PAP member of parliament must pay a percentage of his parliamentary salary of $1,000 per month into party funds. Cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister, also contribute a part of their ministerial salaries.
In early 1971, the position was that the highly organized People’s Action Party and the weak United National Front were the only two non-racial political parties in Singapore capable of making the parliamentary system, though it was thought possible that a third party might emerge before 1973, when the next general elections were expected to be held. In 1971 the UNF had no representation in Parliament. There was a Malay party and a Chinese party. Neither had any elected members of parliament. The Malay party concerned itself mostly with communal matters. Other parties existed in name only.
Following the Peking line, the Barisan Sosialis by then had totally abandoned any pretence of supporting democratic government. They refused to take part in the 1968 general election and their subsequent activity consisted of publishing communist propaganda, staging illegal demonstrations, and organizing sporadic attacks upon PAP branch premises and on traffic lights and community centres. For the time being, this lack of parliamentary opposition (and the anti-social behaviour of the Barisan Sosialis which is handled by the police) does not unduly worry Lee Kuan Yew. The Republic is new and there is a lot of work to be done. It could be argued that for a few years anyway, the Government could reasonably direct all its activities to essential tasks. Politics could wait a while. Besides, Lee Kuan Yew has no doubts that the real Opposition continues to be the Malayan Communist Party (the force behind the Barisan Sosialis). If Lee fails before the parliamentary system is properly established, there is every likelihood that the Barisan Sosialis would fight elections again to achieve power and to destroy democratic government.
In the PAP, members’ interest is maintained by regular organized meetings, sports, courses on political and other subjects, by events conceived to attract housewives and families. Every PAP member of parliament, or parliamentary candidate, is required by the party to hold a “meet the people” session each week. This applies to all cabinet ministers as well.
Shortly after its formation, the PAP made an appeal for money for a “Building Fund” and this, in addition to regular contributions from members of parliament, and occasional profits from special organized events, dramatic performances and musical variety shows, is the main source of the PAP’s finances. After more than ten years in office the PAP has become respectable in the eyes of Singapore merchants and traders, and it is unlikely that they would fail to support the party with contributions if this should ever become necessary. No publicity has ever been given to any large donation to the party by anyone since its inception. Party officials are disinclined to discuss internal party affairs. This is not surprising in a region where every organization, political and otherwise, is alert against communist infiltration.