Alternative view of Malaysia-Singapore History : OUSTED !

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At last, an alternative view of the disastrous period of Singapore in Malaysia - the period leading to Singapore's entry and exit - written by someone close to the " Father of Malaysia " : Tunku Abdul Rahman.

To understand the present, we need to know the past; and we will need to know the past that are from the perspective of someone not tainted by any local political pressures.

'Very controversial' book heading this way'

Malaysiakini
July 22, 2005
http://www.malaysiakini.com
James Wong Wing

A HISTORY book that attempts to account for the bitter and turbulent separation between Malaysia and Singapore in 1965 is trying to gain entry into the Malaysian market from across the Causeway.

Malaysiakini has learnt that the book, titled Ousted!, is authored by "an extremely well-informed ex-insider" Patrick Keith, a Kuala Lumpur-born former journalist in both Malaya and Malaysia who has since migrated and settled in Australia.

Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak joined the Federation of Malaya in 1963 to form the Federation of Malaysia. But in 1965, Singapore was separated from Malaysia and became an independent and sovereign republic.

Since then many conflicting versions of political speculation and academic hypotheses have been advanced to explore the real and exact reasons for the dramatic merger and separation in the 1963-1965 period.

Sources in Singapore who have read the manuscript told malaysiakini that besides the subject-matter, the author himself could still be considered 'sensitive' or 'controversial' in Malaysia because Keith personally knew all the major decision-makers of the event on both sides of the Causeway, including former Malayan/Malaysian prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman and former MCA president Tan Siew Sin.

High-ranking post
It is understood that Keith once held the high-ranking post of deputy director of external information in the Information Department of independent Malaya/Malaysia until 1968, three years after the acrimonious merger and separation.

Besides, the sources said, the book was published by none other than Singapore's Media Masters whose husband-and-wife team also co-authored and published Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History.

Meanwhile, malaysiakini has learnt that Keith's book has been sent to the Internal Affairs Ministry in Kuala Lumpur for preview before it is released for sale and that the ministry has received 'complimentary copies' of the book since yesterday.

The Singapore-based Media Master, owned and operated by veteran Australian journalists Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor, published both the English and Chinese editions of Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History.

When the original English edition of Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History was first imported into Malaysia from Singapore, it instantly created public controversies after some 900 copies were reportedly seized at the Malaysian custom in Johor Baru and another 17 copies from a major bookshop in Kuala Lumpur.

However, the Home Ministry later issued a public statement clarifying that the book is not banned.

Another public controversy arose later when Ian Ward, Norma Miraflor (left) and Media Masters sued the Chinese-language Nanyang Siang Pau for breaching two commercial contracts undertaken to have excerpts of the memoirs translated and published in series by Nanyang Siang Pau.

However, the legal suit was later settled out of court with the newspaper serialising the Chinese excerpts of the memoirs for about two weeks.

Later, Media Masters and Chin Peng himself had the English memoirs translated into Chinese in full by a team of 12 Malaysian translators.

The Chinese edition of the memoirs has been on public sale in Malaysia without any controversy since Nov 2004.

http://www.singapore-window.org/sw05/050722mk.htm

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"Envelope Affair - a merger event retold"

New book tells how Tunku reacted when LKY got him to sign verbal agreement

by Zakir Hussain
Straits Times 28 July 2005
Page H5 HOME

MR LEE Kuan Yew once made Tunku Abdul Rahman sign some of the terms for Singapore's merger with Malaysia on an envelope.

He felt completted to do it because the late Malaysian PM's "memory was elastic", he wrote in his memoirs.

But the Tunku felt "demeaned" by it, claims the author of a new book on the events that led to Singapore's merger with Malaya and eventual separations.

The book, titled Ousted, is by Mr Patrick Keith, a former aide of the Tunku. It is based on his notes and diaries. Mr Keith was deputy director of external information in the Information Department between 1963 and 1968 in Malaysia.

The retired journalist told The Straits Times from his home in Melbourne that he had held himself back until the key actors had left the scene and had written their own accounts.

Ousted hit bookshops here last weekend. The 200-page paperback's three sections each retells the period through the eyes of Malaysia's first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, Singapore's then-prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and then-Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) president Tan Siew Sin.

Mr Keith's ccount mirrors those recounted in the late Tunku's book Looking Back and in the first part of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs, The Singapore Story. But it throws up telling details and includes vivid anecdotes from his copious notes.

One such episodes is described as "The Envelope Affair", which took place in the Tunku's Ritz Hotel suite in London in July 1963, prior to Singapore signing an agreement on final terms for merger with Malaya.

The Tunku had verbally accepted a number of conditions which had been the subject of earlier wrangling between himself and Mr Lee.

These included the guarantees that 50 per cent of the workforce for development projects in Sabah and Sarawak would come from Singapore, and that the Singapore government would have powers to detain secret society gangsters.

Mr Lee wanted these in writing, however, and explained in his memoirs: "Since the Tunku's memory was elastic, I scribbled those points on the back of a used envelope.... and got him to sign it."

For the first time, the Tunku's view of this episode is made known in Mr Keith's book. "He said he was filled with disgust. What sort of a man was this who would refuse to accept his word and insist on getting his signature? No one had ever demeaned him in the manner before," the author writes.

This, Mr Keith narrates, "would forever be remembered as the first instance that really earned him (Mr Lee) the Tunku's personal disaffection".

One significant mention in the book is Mr Keith's own assessment that extremist Malays or the ultras, were responsible for the racial incitement that led to the race riots here in July 1964.

He writes of how their continuing vitriolic campaign against Mr Lee in the Utusan Melayu newspaper aimed to "force him to make statements which they, in turn, could manipulate and declare to be against the wider interests of Malaysia".

The story of Malaysia and Singapore, Mr Keith believes is not over yet.

"Maybe in 10 years, there'll be a more equal society (in Malaysia) and then everything Lee Kuan Yew said (about a Malaysian Malaysia) will come true," said Mr Keith who migrated to Australia in 1968 because he felt disillusioned with Malaysia's racial politics.

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cont.

Excerpts from the book as printed in the Straits Times:

Looking back

IN OUSTED, published by Media Masters, author Patrick Keith describes how leaders in both Malaysia and Singapore saw their relationship deteriorating in the months running up to the separations on Aug 9, 1965.

Mr Lee was a strong proponent of merger
"The Tunku never forgot that Lee Kuan Yew had been a most persistent and persuasive advocate of the proposal for the merger between Malaya and Singapore. 'Lee never let up,' the Tunku would recall many years after the ouster of Singapore from the Federation in 1965. 'He was in my sitting room, my dining room and even my bedroom, morning, noon, and night. He wouldn't let me sleep until I agreed to the merger.' "

Malaysian parliamentarians grew hostile when Mr Lee challenged their leaders
"At first, Umno politicians had listened to him (Mr Lee in the Malaysian parliament) in amazement. Never before had they seen such a display of power and skill with words... Soon the same leaders grew suspicious of a man who could attack one of them with such finesse and incisiveness, and hold them fascinated. A deep hostility began to rise among the Umno line-up and they met Lee's sharp logic with impatience and anger. "

Mr Lee saw extremists in Umno, led by secretary-general Syed Jaafar Albar, as being responsible for the 1964 race riots in Singapore. Malaysian leaders had a different view.
"The riots were hardly over when Tan (Siew Sin, then-Malaysian Chinese Association president) learnt Lee was blaming Albar for them. Tan readily rushed to the Umno secretary-general's defence. He had the MCA issue a statement saying Albar had never been anti-Chinese. The statement read: 'In fact he is a champion of communal harmony.' "

Atobe SG

Reading memoirs, biographies, and historical records (verbal or text) will hopefully give us an insight into, and an understanding of the events and characters that formed and mould personalities, characters, and countries into their present positions.

Looking back at the desperate reasons for Singapore merging with Malaya (with Sarawak and Sabah to form a greater Malaysia), we have to wonder if those reasons were so desperate to lead LKY to continuously bug Tunku Abdul Rahman to accept such an arrangement.

It was almost thirty years later, in his memoirs, that LKY stated on-hindsight that if only he had listened to the previous Sultan of Brunei (the father of the present Sultan Bolkiah), who resisted the idea of merger and kept Brunei out of Malaysia.

After 40 years, are the desperate conditions that pushed Singapore to merger still haunting us today, despite our accumulated wealth, which allow Singapore to nearly perform the impossible - such as a huge modern military, and a bigger island with World Class Facilities ?

In those early days before merger, LKY had taken over Singapore that was bankrupted by the previous administration of Lim Yew Hock, and with limited resources but a vibrant economy that is run by ENTREPRENEURS from all over Asia largely Chinese.

With a vibrant economy that grew from the early days of Stamford Raffles, was Singapore as politically and economically vulnerable then as it is today, or was the vulnerability made an issue to push Singapore into an ill-conceived marriage to suit someones larger agenda (that probably remains untold) ?

The Secretary-General of Barisan Sosialis, the late Dr Lee Siew Choh, had disputed the accuracy of LKYs memoirs, which he claimed was slanted, and had insisted till his last days that it was ill-advised to have Singapore merged with Malaya without the interests of Singaporeans being guaranteed.

The late Dr Lee Siew Choh also insisted that the referendum that was held to allow Singaporeans to decide whether to join the Federation of MALAYSIA was designed to push through LKYs insistence of merger, as the three questions on the referendum were all loaded, and did not allow Singaporeans a choice.

Unfortunately, the memoirs of the late Dr Lee Siew Choh will never be published, despite his best effort to complete it while knowing his days are numbered.

Ater 40 years of LKY at the helm of the Ruling Party and Singapore, we have seen a dearth of entrepreneurs, with only GLCs existing, and Private Enterprise shackled with the exception of those few surviving local corporations, who learnt to play ball with the ruthless Ruling Party.

Without the large pool of entrepreneurs that had existed during the early days that can provide employment and a more resilient economy based on a spread of businesses and industry (similar to Hong Kong's) , we will continue to see the present economic problems currently being experienced with constant problems of structural faults that is largely due to a central planning from the Ruling Party that wiped out most Private Enterprise.

Singapores vulnerability is exposed, and continues to reflect the problems from the early years before merger - of resolving Unemployment, managing COST of Living, and maintaining a high STANDARD of Living for Singaporeans remains as challenging.

After killing private enterprise and all sense of entrepreneurship over the last 40 years, the Ruling Party is now trying to encourage ENTREPRENEURSHIP unlike in Hongkong, where most youngsters show enterprise in plunging into new businesses like duck into water, without the need of "official prodding".

This time around, Singapore has a large National Reserve that allow us to leap frog over any attempt to choke or place a strangle hold that is placed on Singapore.

Unfortunately, how much of this will benefit Singaporeans directly ?

While credit is to be given to LKY for marshalling the Singaporean Spirit in overcoming the odds after being OUSTED from Malaysia, our Singapore problems will continue with his willfulness and insistence to put his personal stamp on Singapore to the extent of waking up even from the grave if he sense something is not going right for Singapore .