THERE has always been, and there still is, a fair amount of scepticism about the survival of the parliamentary system of democracy in Malaysia and Singapore. True, the Earl of Canning in his Minute of 1859 believed that, “democratic in spite of the outward form of their own government, enterprising and persevering”, the Chinese in Singapore were “imbued with a strong tendency to self-government”, but the Earl must have been thinking more of their talent for looking after their own affairs than of their interest in self-government in the national, as distinct from the clan and community, sense. Indeed, their complete lack of interest in self-government at state level is borne out by the fact that up until the end of the Second World War, the Chinese in Singapore were most reluctant even to lend a hand in governing the Colony. Early efforts to introduce a form of self-government, through participation in municipal work, were actually resisted. In 1910 the Municipalities Ordinance of 1896 was still in force, at least in theory: the town was split into five wards to be represented by Commissioners elected by qualified voters, and by Commissioners appointed by the Government, the advantage being with the elected members in the event of there being an odd number of Commissioners. The intention was that the ratepayers should to a large extent administer municipal affairs. But after fourteen years it was generally agreed that the experiment had failed. There were few men of leisure in the Colony who were also competent to perform the necessary work. People came to Singapore to work hard, to speculate, to make money and go away again. They were not interested in self-government, nationalism, or, in fact, in anything other than conditions which would provide them with reasonable opportunities for the acquisition of wealth.
This early move towards democracy was therefore withdrawn as being unworkable, and the Governor appointed a Board, consisting of representatives of the prominent communities, to keep an eye on municipal affairs. This Board was given limited power, the measure of which can be gauged from the fact that it could not adopt or reject the Budget. It was not until 1949 that Singapore again held elections for the municipality. A short while earlier, Singapore had elected six Assemblymen to the newly-formed Legislative Council. Democracy in all its forms, especially trade unionism, surged forward—an aftermath of the war. A Labour Party came into being in 1948, too late to take part in the Legislative Council elections, but it managed to win a seat in the first municipal election held in April, 1949. The Progressive Party, formed in 1947, won thirteen seats. The Progressive Party won three of the six elected seats in the newly-formed Legislative Council
When Singapore went to the polls in 1955 to elect members to a partly elected, partly nominated legislature, seven political parties sought the voters’ favour, including the newly-formed People’s Action Party which put up a token number of candidates headed by Lee Kuan Yew. Three were elected. Five years later, in 1959, there were fourteen political parties. Most of them disappeared soon after the elections were held. When the Barisan Sosialis in 1966 decided to abandon the parliamentary struggle, the People’s Action Party found itself without an opposition in Parliament. (Barisan Sosialis is Malay for Socialist Front. It is, in fact, a communist-front organization.) By 1967 the PAP, through winning by-elections caused by the Barisan Sosialis vacancies, occupied 49 of the 51 seats. The other two had been held since 1963 by Barisan Members of Parliament gone underground to avoid arrest for subversion. The Speaker revealed that he had received a letter from the two Barisan Sosialis Members of Parliament asking for “leave of absence until such time as the Government can guarantee us security and freedom from arbitrary detention”. Both M.P.s disappeared on 8 October, 1963, when the Malaysian Government arrested subversive and anti-Malaysian elements during a strike called by the communists’ open-front trade union movement.
In the best parliamentary tradition, the Speaker replied: “In view of your dilemma, I hereby grant you leave to be absent from all future sittings of the Assembly until such time as you are able to be present.”
In the 1968 general elections 51 PAP candidates were returned unopposed. Five Independents and two members of the Workers’ Party challenged the other seven PAP candidates. All seven PAP candidates, including the Prime Minister, were elected. Once again the Singapore Parliament was a single-party affair, in accordance with the wishes of the electorate.
This state of affairs has caused people to wonder whether parliamentary democracy can survive in Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew’s own attitude is that the basic essential of democracy, the right to vote out an oppressive or inefficient or corrupt government, still obtains. By-elections and general elections guarantee the people’s inherent right to elect their own representatives to govern them: if they want to elect fifty-one members of the People’s Action Party would it be democratic to deny them that privilege? In any case, adds Lee Kuan Yew, the real opposition to the PAP and democracy is the oldest political party in Singapore, and that is the underground Malayan Communist Party.
Both Sir Richard Winstedt and Lennox A. Mills, two knowledgeable scholars, among others, have questioned whether democracy is suitable for the Malays, or liked by the Chinese. Mills, in his book Malaya: A Political and Economic Appraisal, came to the conclusion that the mass of the Chinese population (in Malaya and Singapore) are not interested in democracy. They still believe that “governments exist to be placated, to be evaded or to be bought when they are oppressive: to be patiently obeyed at other times”. In Mills’ view “they do not share the ideas which lie at the root of Western democracy. Whether they will be willing to acquire them and cease to think as Chinese is a question of the future. It is not likely that they will show any sudden enthusiasm for Western democracy.” Mills wrote that in 1957. Much has changed in Singapore (and Malaya) in ten years.
Mills had similar views about the Malays. UMNO leaders, he pointed out, were drawn largely from the Malay aristocracy. They were followed by a minority of politically conscious Malays. Mills said the leaders used the language of democracy, but it was doubtful, in his view, whether in doing this they voiced the aspirations of the peasant majority. The peasants had a tradition of leadership by the aristocracy, and they continued to follow their leaders as they had done in the past. They looked to them to defend their Malay way of life. In economics the Malay leaders were conservative: they were opposed to the nationalization of foreign industry, and they hoped to attract more outside capital.
In Singapore, the 1963 elections proved that not all of Mills’ conclusions were correct, at least not so far as urban Malays were concerned, for every single UMNO candidate was defeated, in spite of a call from Tunku Abdul Rahman, by an anti-UMNO multiracialist opponent.
Winstedt, in his book The Malays (1961 edition), questioned whether democracy, although successful in Europe, suited the needs of Asia. He believed that the only way to see beyond one’s nose for the promotion of racial welfare was to “review the effect of past practice and endeavour, and to study the social, political, economic and spiritual history of the race that is to be the subject of experiment”. He offered no solution, except to remind his readers that the best government is the best administration.
B. W. Hodder (Man in Malaya, 1959) warned that democracy in Malaya could involve the speedy economic and political suppression of the Malays by Chinese and Indians. “Should popular elections on Western lines be fully adopted, Chinese could be in effective control of this key to the Pacific—a fact in which Australia and New Zealand, as well as America and Great Britain, must be interested.” The Alliance Government may have had this in mind when in 1960 it amended the Constitution to ensure that Malaya was not divided into one hundred federal constituencies on the basis of the near-equality of registered voters rather than population, which is what the Constitution called for. The Constitution would have given the non-Malay communities a greater measure of political power. The Alliance amended to one hundred and four constituencies which are so drawn as to favour the Malay vote. This perhaps is what Hodder had in mind when he spoke of the possibility of Malay suppression if elections were held on Western lines. The Alliance Government also decided against holding popular elections for town councils in 1965, fearing, with some justification, that they could all be won by the Chinese urban vote for the People’s Action Party. The official explanation was that “the country is at war against the Indonesians, the communist terrorists and their sympathizers and agents”. No town council elections have been held since Indonesia’s confrontation ended.
Derek Cooper, in a BBC broadcast, once asked Lee Kuan Yew what he meant by the word “democratic”. Lee said he used the word in the sense normally understood: “that there is some measure of popular will, of popular support; that, from time to time, as accurately as is possible with trying to find out what human beings in a large group want or feel or think, one tries to act in accordance with the wishes of the majority.”
Lee’s basic belief in democracy is founded on the one-man-one-vote principle for the election of people’s representatives. He is also on record as saying that Western-type parliamentary democracy may have to be adjusted to fit the needs and requirements of Asian peoples.
Lee Kuan Yew thought out loud about the future of the one-man-one-vote system of government in Southeast Asia at Chatham House in May, 1962. He was not optimistic. He did not think it would come about in Southeast Asia for various reasons. But the present generation of leaders in this particular phase in Singapore and Malaysia envisaged a continuance of the system, and they saw in this a workable solution to prevent communist manipulation of Chinese sentiment on behalf of the communists.
Lee Kuan Yew said that in Malaysia the China-born Chinese were not communists, and that that was important. “They are for themselves, with all their prejudices and pride in their ancient culture and civilization.” Ninety-nine per cent of the Malayan Communist Party were Chinese. They had fought for seventeen years, from 1945, to establish a Soviet Republic based on the efforts and sacrifices of the Chinese. They could not conceive of a situation in which communism could come to Malaya without their efforts. And they used the obvious and simple method of winning more people over to communism by pointing to the illustrious example of China. “The result is that they win more recruits from the Chinese into the Malayan Communist Party and present communism to the non-Chinese in Malaya as Chinese imperialism, and so get themselves more and more isolated in this Chinese world. The Malays watching this have a tremendous fear that their position will be jeopardized, and they therefore play around their traditional leaders.”
Lee said that Tunku Abdul Rahman, a traditional leader of the Malays, had proved over seven years of his leadership that he was unlikely to be disputed as the Malay leader for a long time, “and certainly for as long as the Malayan Communist Party pursues this stupid policy of augmenting their strength on the basis of the prestige and reputation of China, making an appeal only to the Chinese”.
Lee said there were vagaries about the system of one-man-one-vote “which I think makes it an extremely hazardous system to run anywhere in the under-developed and the under-educated world. . . We are not exceptional: we are neither more intelligent nor better educated than many of our neighbours. We have been more fortunately endowed and enjoy a better standard of living, but I do not think the basic factors are materially different. Where the majority of your population is semi-literate, it responds more to the carrot than to the stick, and politicians at election time cannot use the stick, so this leads to a situation where he who bids the highest wins. At a time when you want harder work with less return and more capital investment, one-man-one-vote produces just the opposite. The offer of more return with less work ends up in bankruptcy. I do not think it is a coincidence that it has flopped in Pakistan, did not succeed in Burma, nearly came to grief in Ceylon. . . It has been abandoned, decried and condemned in Indonesia, and it is not held in esteem anywhere in Asia. It is not a tradition with the Malays nor with the Chinese to count heads: their custom has always been to listen to the dictum of the elder. . . I think it will endure in Malaya for some time, but for how long, I do not know. I should imagine that with every passing year there will be mutations made on the system in order to make it still work. We all know that barely five months ago the Tunku brought in several basic amendments to the Constitution, a constitution drafted by five eminent jurists from five Commonwealth countries. They settled in Rome and drafted what was jurisprudentially a sensible and an elegant constitution—but it was not going to work. Very wisely, the Tunku decided that he would change bits and pieces. It was my unfortunate burden to attend a Law Society dinner shortly after that in the University, where a somewhat idealistic president of that society decried the fact that the Tunku had already moved 137 amendments, ‘more amendments than there are articles in his Constitution’ Gratuitously I defended the need for making something work even if it meant departing from my norms; and I should be surprised if in the course of the next five years there are not as many amendments as there were in the past five years. . .”
Asked if it were not true that if democratic one-man-one-vote rule is abandoned military dictatorship follows, Lee Kuan Yew said he did not think the proposition was valid. “What I think is valid as a general proposition is that the system of cutting up the country in accordance with the number of adult citizens of given proportions, to elect representatives who then elect amongst like-minded people a cabinet, which then elects a primus inter pares amongst the cabinet, is one which presupposes so many basic conditions, which are often non-existent, that I do not think it will ever work. They have all been superseded by systems which give power effectively to one man or a group of men for an indefinite period. Government to be effective must at least give the impression of enduring, and a government which is open to the vagaries of the ballot box when the people who put their crosses in the ballot boxes are not illiterate but semi-literate, which is worse, is a government which is already weakened before it starts to govern.” Lee remarked that he said this with no desire to explain away his own problem, but he added: “If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely, without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I have not the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their own interests. That is a fact which the educated understand, but we are all caught in this system which the British export all over the place hoping that somewhere it will take root. . .”
The Prime Minister spoke of the difficulties of a one-man-one-vote government in a developing country trying to achieve economic growth through the application of harsh measures. He doubted whether there would ever have been an Industrial Revolution in Britain if there had been a one-man-one-vote system of government. “Mao Tse-tung,” he ventured, “would lose his deposit if he had to stand for election today.”