The People's Action Party was thrown into turmoil in August 1957 when a group of leftists engineered a takeover of the party. It was a dramatic episode which marked a turning point in its history as Lee Kuan Yew never trusted the left again and the party was never the same again.
STAND amid the cavernous emptiness, close your eyes, let your imagination roam and you might just hear reverberating echoes of the fiery smashes and fancy footwork that gripped the whole of Singapore on June 5, 1955.
Who knows, you might have been there as a child yourself to cheer Wong Peng Soon's breathtaking wristwork and Ong Poh Lim's dazzling 'crocodile serve' which brought the world's greatest badminton prize - the Thomas Cup - to Malaya for the third time in this very hall.
Memories of the ear-splitting ovation for the world's unsurpassed players of the day when they thrashed Denmark 8-1 will forever be intertwined with the Singapore Badminton Hall on Guillemard Road.
Opened in 1952 and funded by public donations and a loan from 'Tiger Balm King' Aw Boon Haw, the nondescript building trapped in an architectural time warp has been designated as a historical site.
Its walls did not just rock to the smashes of sporting history and the sounds of musical history - the legendary P. Ramlee performed there in the 1950s and the Rolling Stones in 1965. They also bore silent witness to political history when the hall became the counting centre for Singapore's early elections and the venue where PAP members turned up by the thousands to elect their leaders.
One Sunday morning on 4 August 1957, lorry after lorry and bus after bus rumbled to its driveway pouring out a stream of humanity which soon swelled to about 3,000. The event: the PAP fourth annual party conference. The agenda: to elect a new 12-man central executive committee (CEC) to govern the party.
Mrs Lee Kuan Yew remembered the occasion because of the poor acoustics and the sight of garish banners and crude caricatures hanging on the stage. Toh Chin Chye sensed a 'strange, tense atmosphere'. Seated at the back, Goh Keng Swee found it hard to shut his ears off to the non-stop playing of communist-inspired music.
Party secretary Lee Kuan Yew was perturbed to see so many unfamiliar faces. Who were they? Were they really party members? Why were people whispering and casting quick sidelong glances?
The Lee group had put up a team of nine candidates including eight from the outgoing CEC and were prepared to concede three or four slots to the leftists. They also put forth six resolutions which included affirming the goal of an 'independent, democratic, non-communist socialist Malaya' and endorsing the party line at the recent constitutional conference in London.
The party gathering came in the wake of two controversial events.
The first was the marathon debate at party HQ on 24 March 1957 when the Middle Road trade unionists demanded a withdrawal of the mandate for Lee at the second constitutional talks in London. The second was the Tanjong Pagar by-elections on 29 June 1957 which saw Lee re-contesting and winning his seat following a challenge from David Marshall in the legislative assembly; the disgruntled leftists had worked covertly to support Marshall.
The party position was to accept the constitutional concessions and then work for independence through merger with Malaya. Self-government was seen as a step forward. Refusal to accept the terms would mean a deadlock and create a power vacuum which could be exploited by corrupt elements.
Applause greeted the candidates as they went up the stage one by one.
Lee began to smell a rat when he realised that the more left the candidate was, the louder the applause.
One leftist candidate was Liang Chye Ming, who attended the same primary school in Johor as Lim Chin Siong. Recounting the varying intensity of the clapping, Liang said: 'The applause given to the leftist members was very enthusiastic, more so than that given to Lee and his non-communist group. Mine was quite good.' The applause was meant to signal to the audience which leftist candidates they should vote for, according to Liang, an English-language tutor in Hong Kong in 2003.
Although Lee and company had got wind of the challenge, the results from the secret ballot still came as a rude shock. They scored a thumping win with their resolutions which were carried by a vote of 1,150 to 112. But of the 12 highest vote-getters, only six of their candidates were elected. It was scant consolation to Lee that he clinched the highest number of votes (1,213). Toh took 1,121 votes followed by Ahmad Ibrahim (966), Goh Chew Chua (794), Tann Wee Tiong (655) and Chan Choy Siong (621).
The other three candidates were booted out, the most ignominious being the downfall of party treasurer Ong Eng Guan, who with Lee and Toh made up the Big Three of the PAP then. The rejection of Haron Kassim and Ismail Rahim had the added effect of upsetting the party's Malay fraternity.
The leftists grabbed the other six seats. Three were from the outgoing CEC - Tan Chong Kin (with 811 votes), an English-educated bookkeeper from Farrer Park branch; T.T. Rajah (977), a Ceylonese lawyer and legal adviser to left-wing trade unions; and Goh Boon Toh (972), secretary of the Singapore Cycle and Motor Workers' Union.
The three new CEC officials were Tan Kong Guan (751), a welder and vice-chairman of Bukit Timah branch; Chen Say Jame (651) who took over as secretary-general of the Singapore Bus Workers' Union after the arrest of Fong Swee Suan; and Ong Chye Ann (762), a clerk in a car spare parts firm and vice-chairman of Farrer Park branch.
At six versus six, Lee's group and the leftists were deadlocked.
Suddenly, the English-educated elite who had ruled the party from day one had lost its majority - and its grip on power.
IF THE Lee people were flummoxed by the tie, it was because they thought there was a tacit understanding with the leftists that the latter should take only three or four seats in the ruling body. As the ratios in previous party elections showed, the leftists occupied four spots in the last CEC, virtually none in the second CEC and three in the first CEC.
Under this power-sharing arrangement, Lee and his lieutenants were supposed to control the party while the leftists had free run of the party branches, trade unions, students' bodies, farmers' associations and other grassroots organisations.
This agreement was crucial to Lee as he had no illusion that the leftists could have captured the CEC anytime if they wanted to as the party was open and loose with so many party members belonging to the Middle Road unions.
Goh Keng Swee was convinced that the communists had already taken over the party from the start and could have ejected Lee, Toh and him in its formative days. The reasons they baulked, he believed, were that they knew they could not perform in the legislative assembly and that the party conferred respectability on them. Furthermore, as Toh noted, they still needed Lee as legal adviser to their unions.
Unquestionably, the left had exerted a strong influence on the party from the outset. The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) had instructed its open front operatives to join the party. Fang Mingwu, a former underground activist in Singapore who lived in exile in Thailand, explained that MCP supported Lee 'because he was the best person at the time to partner us in the united front against the colonial power'.
Among the 14 PAP convenors on inauguration day, 21 November 1954, four were leftists - Devan Nair, Samad Ismail, Fong Swee Suan and Chan Chiaw Thor. Nair, Fong and Chan went on to serve on the first CEC.
In the aftermath of the Hock Lee bus riot in May 1955, the leftists disappeared completely from the second CEC ostensibly to avoid tarnishing the name of PAP and giving an excuse to the Labour Front government to ban the budding party.
Fong, who led the Hock Lee bus strike, said they abstained from the CEC elections on June 26, 1955, to pre-empt any government action against the PAP leadership. James Puthucheary's account was that at Lee's request, Samad Ismail persuaded Lim Chin Siong and other leftists not to be in the power line-up. Nair said he advised the leading leftists to stay clear from the CEC to avoid a Special Branch crackdown.
Whatever the version, the upshot of it all was that the left withdrew from the second CEC elections. Nair, Chan and Fong did not offer themselves for re-election while Lim Chin Siong, S. Woodhull and James Puthucheary stood down. According to press reports, Lim spoke to a thunderous reception at the conference saying that it was not necessary to be a CEC member to 'get things done'.
The Straits Times editorial commented that although 'an air of beautiful unanimity and good party comradeship pervaded the PAP annual conference throughout the four and a half hours, it was possible to detect the echoes of muffled thunder behind the scenes on the PAP stage'.
Headlined 'Forked Lightning', it warned that 'the lightning may have forked but it is still the same streak of lightning'.
Then the leftists staged a rousing comeback in the third party conference on July 8, 1956. They said that they were returning to the CEC at the request of Lee who felt isolated and needed the left to boost party support. Lee, however, took the view that the leftists wanted to use the PAP CEC as cover as they anticipated further action against them.
Four leftists were elected then - Lim Chin Siong, Chia Ek Tian, Devan Nair and Goh Boon Toh. Lim chalked up the highest number of votes (1,537) followed by Lee (1,488). When Lim became assistant secretary, Toh said, it signalled that 'if the Middle Road group had wanted to do so, they could have ousted Lee and his colleagues and captured the PAP central executive'. Lee Khoon Choy interpreted the results as the first attempt by the left to capture the CEC.
Before the third CEC elections, Lee had made it clear that the leftists should be in the minority and was re-assured when they took only four out of 12 seats. So what happened at the fourth CEC elections? If the leftists were supposed to stop at four, why did they capture half the CEC depriving the Lee people of their majority? Was it a coup? Who orchestrated it?
TWO days after the Aug 4 party polls, T.T. Rajah and his five leftist colleagues turned up for the first CEC meeting at the Neil Road PAP HQ.
When it broke up four hours later at 12.30am, there was no sign of any office-bearers.
'Lee Kuan Yew shocked us by saying six of the 12 members would not hold office. We tried our best to persuade Lee but he was firm,' said the Middle Temple-trained lawyer who acted as spokesman for the group.
Lee had dropped his bombshell - his team of six refused to hold office on the grounds that they had lost their moral right to enforce the resolution for an independent, democratic, non-communist, socialist Malaya. As he reflected later, they felt that they 'should pass the ball to them' and let them be in charge when the party came to grief. If he and Toh had carried on, they would have become their prisoners and given them cover. 'By turning the tables on them, we exposed them and we watched what they were going to do,' he said.
The leftists were shocked to find themselves in such a quandary - yes, they wanted to dominate and dictate to the party but they wanted to do so with Lee and company providing the veneer of legitimacy. They were fearful that if they took over the party, their cover would be blown; the British were fighting a war against the communists in Malaya and would have no qualms about incarcerating them.
Furthermore, they did not want to split the party and weaken PAP's chances in the coming elections under the new constitution for self-government.
They needed the party to win the polls so that they could secure the release of their beloved leaders in Changi Prison.
In increasing desperation, the leftists tried to persuade Lee to change his mind and assume office. Ong Chye Ann said he was the first to offer to give up his seat to any Lee nominee. Then Tan Kong Guan followed up with a similar offer. Lee's answer was no and no.
More peace offerings were made but Lee refused to budge. The party was thrown into disarray. The divided CEC met once more on 13 August 1957 to break the impasse. There was still no solution. Forced into a tight corner, Rajah said they had 'no choice but to hold positions'.
Rajah (pictured right) replaced Lee as secretary because he was English-educated and a legal adviser to the trade unions, said Tan Kong Guan who became the vice-chairman. Ong Chye Ann, who assumed the treasurer's post, remembered checking the party's kitty and finding that it contained only a few thousand dollars.
Tan Chong Kin took over Toh's chairmanship, Chen Say Jame became assistant secretary and Goh Boon Toh, assistant treasurer. What happened to the other six? Lee, Toh, Ahmad Ibrahim, Goh Chew Chua, Chan Choy Siong and Tann Wee Tiong remained as CEC members.
The new team drew up its plans to unite the party and open more new branches. But its reign was short-lived, lasting only 10 days. Just as Lee had predicted, grief came but earlier than expected when the Lim Yew Hock government rounded up five office-bearers as part of a massive anti-communist operation.
If there was a silver lining in the factional strife, it was that the educated public began to realise that the PAP was not a monolithic left but was split into two opposing camps - non-communist versus pro-communist.
Even the hostile English language press became more discerning, dubbing the Lee people as 'moderates' and stigmatising their opponents as 'extremists'.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
When civil servants turned street sweepers
Monday, September 14, 2009
When civil servants turned street sweepers
Sep 12, 2009
When Ong Eng Guan became Mayor between 1957 and 1959, he gave the Singapore public a terrifying preview of what a PAP government might be like
WHEN the councillors trooped into a City Hall room for a meeting and found that there were not enough seats, Mayor Ong Eng Guan summoned R. Middleton Smith, the acting chief administrative officer of the city council, and hollered: 'Go and get chairs.' The British expatriate left and came back carrying one chair after another.
Chan Chee Seng felt compelled to lend a hand. 'I was a witness. I felt so bad I went to help him carry the chairs.' The former city councillor, who related this anecdote, could not help admiring the stoic endurance and phlegmatic patience of British colonial officials who bore the brunt of Ong's berating and bullying. 'They were really good and very cultivated. I could not understand why the Mayor had to treat them in such a way.'
Goh Sin Ee, who was a chief officer in the maintenance department in the city council, recalled attending a meeting convened by Ong for all the heads of departments. When the Mayor commented that the Europeans were passing their work to Asian heads, an expatriate expressed disagreement. Goh was shocked when Ong 'pointed his finger at the officer and asked him to get out'.
Ong's crusade against the establishment has been described by some writers as the nearest to a Singapore equivalent of the fall of the Bastille in 1789, when peasants seized the symbol of royal tyranny and ignited the French Revolution.
Many heads rolled - metaphorically. It was a terrifying situation, Rajaratnam said, when Ong treated haw-kers as top dogs and began sacking staff.
The Mayor was particularly harsh on the expatriates as he wanted to expose their inefficiency and racial prejudice against Asians: a commercial secretary was sacked for allegedly embracing a young Chinese typist; a city engineer was reprimanded for insulting the dignity of the council by bringing his dog into City Hall; and a city analyst was fined $200 a month for a year for allegedly being rude to the Mayor.
Ong abolished the monopoly of a European legal firm which enjoyed all of the city council legal work and rescinded the Malayanisation scheme which allowed for the gradual retirement of expatriates with handsome provident fund benefits.
Local civil servants who incurred his wrath were subjected to the humiliation of a dressing down in front of the people who complained against them. The Mayor did not allow staff to read newspapers or drink tea or coffee at work. He would prowl around the office and eavesdrop on conversations. If anybody was found to be a bookie, he was sacked on the spot. If he was found to be rude to the public, he would have to give a lengthy and satisfactory explanation or face punitive action.
Ong could not tolerate long queues and tardy responses to letters and enquiries from the public. He expected bills to be settled within 15 minutes at the counter. A vehicle inspector with 22 years' service lost his job for allegedly keeping a taxi driver waiting for almost an hour before taking down a report from him. An efficiency officer was appointed to execute policies and investigate complaints.
Civil servants had to obey the Mayor, recalled Goh Sin Ee, 'if not, we had to get out of the job'. If anyone failed to do his work properly, he would be downgraded and would have to settle for less pay, he said.
P. C. Marcus, who was the 'efficiency expert' in the city council and later became the deputy chief administrative officer, summed it up by saying that Ong 'put the fear of God in staff, both expats and local'. Later even Marcus himself, who was close to PAP leaders, fell out with Ong.
The Mayor had no compunction about ordering staff to get out of their offices to clean up the city. Retired civil servants still chafed at the memory, saying it was akin to the hard labour imposed on professionals in communist countries. Forced to do menial labour, some felt as if Ong was behaving like a communist leader and that Singapore was going communist.
Fong Sip Chee recounted an operation dubbed Operation Pantai Chantek ('Beautiful Beach' in Malay) in which frightened civil servants were made to dig up stones and clean up Nicoll Highway.
City council officers were rostered to sweep different roads on different days. Goh Sin Ee found himself in a spot when he was assigned to sweep an area where he was known to most of the shopkeepers. He confessed that he had to buy a 'big Chinese type of hat' to shield him from the sun - and embarrassment.
Posted by El Lobo Loco at 6:09 PM 0 comments
Labels: History, PAP, Politics, Singapore Democracy, Social
When Lee lost control of PAP for 10 days
Sep 12, 2009
When civil servants turned street sweepers
Sep 12, 2009
When Ong Eng Guan became Mayor between 1957 and 1959, he gave the Singapore public a terrifying preview of what a PAP government might be like
WHEN the councillors trooped into a City Hall room for a meeting and found that there were not enough seats, Mayor Ong Eng Guan summoned R. Middleton Smith, the acting chief administrative officer of the city council, and hollered: 'Go and get chairs.' The British expatriate left and came back carrying one chair after another.
Chan Chee Seng felt compelled to lend a hand. 'I was a witness. I felt so bad I went to help him carry the chairs.' The former city councillor, who related this anecdote, could not help admiring the stoic endurance and phlegmatic patience of British colonial officials who bore the brunt of Ong's berating and bullying. 'They were really good and very cultivated. I could not understand why the Mayor had to treat them in such a way.'
Goh Sin Ee, who was a chief officer in the maintenance department in the city council, recalled attending a meeting convened by Ong for all the heads of departments. When the Mayor commented that the Europeans were passing their work to Asian heads, an expatriate expressed disagreement. Goh was shocked when Ong 'pointed his finger at the officer and asked him to get out'.
Ong's crusade against the establishment has been described by some writers as the nearest to a Singapore equivalent of the fall of the Bastille in 1789, when peasants seized the symbol of royal tyranny and ignited the French Revolution.
Many heads rolled - metaphorically. It was a terrifying situation, Rajaratnam said, when Ong treated haw-kers as top dogs and began sacking staff.
The Mayor was particularly harsh on the expatriates as he wanted to expose their inefficiency and racial prejudice against Asians: a commercial secretary was sacked for allegedly embracing a young Chinese typist; a city engineer was reprimanded for insulting the dignity of the council by bringing his dog into City Hall; and a city analyst was fined $200 a month for a year for allegedly being rude to the Mayor.
Ong abolished the monopoly of a European legal firm which enjoyed all of the city council legal work and rescinded the Malayanisation scheme which allowed for the gradual retirement of expatriates with handsome provident fund benefits.
Local civil servants who incurred his wrath were subjected to the humiliation of a dressing down in front of the people who complained against them. The Mayor did not allow staff to read newspapers or drink tea or coffee at work. He would prowl around the office and eavesdrop on conversations. If anybody was found to be a bookie, he was sacked on the spot. If he was found to be rude to the public, he would have to give a lengthy and satisfactory explanation or face punitive action.
Ong could not tolerate long queues and tardy responses to letters and enquiries from the public. He expected bills to be settled within 15 minutes at the counter. A vehicle inspector with 22 years' service lost his job for allegedly keeping a taxi driver waiting for almost an hour before taking down a report from him. An efficiency officer was appointed to execute policies and investigate complaints.
Civil servants had to obey the Mayor, recalled Goh Sin Ee, 'if not, we had to get out of the job'. If anyone failed to do his work properly, he would be downgraded and would have to settle for less pay, he said.
P. C. Marcus, who was the 'efficiency expert' in the city council and later became the deputy chief administrative officer, summed it up by saying that Ong 'put the fear of God in staff, both expats and local'. Later even Marcus himself, who was close to PAP leaders, fell out with Ong.
The Mayor had no compunction about ordering staff to get out of their offices to clean up the city. Retired civil servants still chafed at the memory, saying it was akin to the hard labour imposed on professionals in communist countries. Forced to do menial labour, some felt as if Ong was behaving like a communist leader and that Singapore was going communist.
Fong Sip Chee recounted an operation dubbed Operation Pantai Chantek ('Beautiful Beach' in Malay) in which frightened civil servants were made to dig up stones and clean up Nicoll Highway.
City council officers were rostered to sweep different roads on different days. Goh Sin Ee found himself in a spot when he was assigned to sweep an area where he was known to most of the shopkeepers. He confessed that he had to buy a 'big Chinese type of hat' to shield him from the sun - and embarrassment.
Posted by El Lobo Loco at 6:09 PM 0 comments
Labels: History, PAP, Politics, Singapore Democracy, Social
When Lee lost control of PAP for 10 days
Sep 12, 2009
Native species may be wiped out by acid rain - ST 14 Sept
Twenty species of animals plentiful in the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in the 1980s, including frogs, crabs and fish, are slowly being wiped out.
Preliminary findings by the National University of Singapore (NUS) are pointing to the acidity of a stream in the 80ha nature reserve, which is rich in plant and animal life. A four-year study led by Associate Professor David Higgitt of the university's geography department has noted that the stream, which covers 5ha of land, is more acidic after rainstorms.
The acidity or alkalinity of fluids is expressed as a pH value, with pH 7 being neutral. Values lower than seven indicate acidity, and above seven, alkalinity.
Researchers have found the water in the stream on the nature reserve to have a pH value of 4.4 to 4.7. Prof Higgitt believes it is more acidic now than 20 years ago.
Earlier studies have found that although animal species have evolved and adapted to the increasingly acidic environment, they are likely to be under stress. The animal population has come down and some crabs, for example, have developed harder shells.
Professor Peter Ng, director of the Raffles Museum for Biodiversity Research at the NUS, said a change of one unit in the water's pH represents a tenfold change in its acidity. This may be beyond the ability of the animals' bodies to cope with.
The acidity of the water comes from sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere - from industrial pollutants and lightning, for example - that dissolve in rain water, which then falls into streams and other bodies of water.
The National Parks Board (NParks) is working with the NUS to find out how badly the water quality is affecting the diversity of the plant and animal life in Singapore's last remaining primary forest. Its assistant director of centre nature reserves Sharon Chan agreed that the changes in the pH of some streams make a closer study necessary, so freshwater habitats in the nature reserves can be better managed.
The pH level of rain water in some parts of the United States and western Europe was as low as two in the 1980s. But since then, with regulations curbing pollution and the use of cleaner fuels, their acidity levels have fallen.
Dr Erik Velasco, a post-doctoral fellow in the NUS' geography department, said the presence of acid rain here is to be expected, given the level of industrialisation and the presence of aerosols. Aerosols are tiny air particles that occur naturally and are caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The National Environment Agency, however, said the acidity of rain water here - at pH 5 - is no different from that of urban cities around the world; it also said rain water is no more acidic now than in the 1990s.
Prof Higgitt suggested that one way to protect the biodiversity in the stream would be to add limestone - a naturally occurring alkali - to slow down acidification. But he cautioned that more studies are needed as this could affect the environment in other ways.
amreshg@sph.com.sg
Preliminary findings by the National University of Singapore (NUS) are pointing to the acidity of a stream in the 80ha nature reserve, which is rich in plant and animal life. A four-year study led by Associate Professor David Higgitt of the university's geography department has noted that the stream, which covers 5ha of land, is more acidic after rainstorms.
The acidity or alkalinity of fluids is expressed as a pH value, with pH 7 being neutral. Values lower than seven indicate acidity, and above seven, alkalinity.
Researchers have found the water in the stream on the nature reserve to have a pH value of 4.4 to 4.7. Prof Higgitt believes it is more acidic now than 20 years ago.
Earlier studies have found that although animal species have evolved and adapted to the increasingly acidic environment, they are likely to be under stress. The animal population has come down and some crabs, for example, have developed harder shells.
Professor Peter Ng, director of the Raffles Museum for Biodiversity Research at the NUS, said a change of one unit in the water's pH represents a tenfold change in its acidity. This may be beyond the ability of the animals' bodies to cope with.
The acidity of the water comes from sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere - from industrial pollutants and lightning, for example - that dissolve in rain water, which then falls into streams and other bodies of water.
The National Parks Board (NParks) is working with the NUS to find out how badly the water quality is affecting the diversity of the plant and animal life in Singapore's last remaining primary forest. Its assistant director of centre nature reserves Sharon Chan agreed that the changes in the pH of some streams make a closer study necessary, so freshwater habitats in the nature reserves can be better managed.
The pH level of rain water in some parts of the United States and western Europe was as low as two in the 1980s. But since then, with regulations curbing pollution and the use of cleaner fuels, their acidity levels have fallen.
Dr Erik Velasco, a post-doctoral fellow in the NUS' geography department, said the presence of acid rain here is to be expected, given the level of industrialisation and the presence of aerosols. Aerosols are tiny air particles that occur naturally and are caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The National Environment Agency, however, said the acidity of rain water here - at pH 5 - is no different from that of urban cities around the world; it also said rain water is no more acidic now than in the 1990s.
Prof Higgitt suggested that one way to protect the biodiversity in the stream would be to add limestone - a naturally occurring alkali - to slow down acidification. But he cautioned that more studies are needed as this could affect the environment in other ways.
amreshg@sph.com.sg
Friday, September 11, 2009
A life with (almost) no regrets - ST Sept 11 2009
A life with (almost) no regrets
It has been a big week for former leftist politician Fong Swee Suan. On Tuesday, he reunited with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, some 50 years after they crossed swords in Parliament. They were there for the launch of the book, Men In White, which features both their stories. Insight speaks to Mr Fong, an influential figure in the early days of the PAP, for his thoughts on the meeting with a foe from the past as well as a life full of ups and downs.
By Jeremy Au Yong
WHEN talking about Mr Fong Swee Suan, it is difficult to avoid wandering into the 'what ifs'. What if this founding member of the People's Action party (PAP) never broke away to join the Barisan Sosialis party? What if the Barisan had succeeded in wresting power from the PAP?
Pass the genial Mr Fong on the street, and most people would not bat an eyelid. In his typical neatly pressed short-sleeved shirt and pants, the 78-year-old looks like any senior going about his daily business.
Few would realise that this is a man who - but for a series of what ifs - could have been one of Singapore's top political leaders.
He was once in the upper echelons of the PAP leadership. In 1954, he was one of the 14 founding members of the PAP, among whom were Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Goh Keng Swee and the late S. Rajaratnam. He had also served as a political secretary in the PAP government.
Yet none of the what ifs seems to bother Mr Fong. Speaking at his Bukit Panjang flat, he betrays no resentment or bitterness over what happened to him.
He tells of his arrests - once in connection with the Hock Lee bus riots in 1955 and another as a suspected communist sympathiser in 1963's Operation Cold Store - calmly and matter-of-factly, the way one might describe a bout of chicken pox.
Today, Mr Fong is back in the news for two reasons. First, he is featured prominently in a new book about the history of the PAP called Men In White: The Untold Story of Singapore's Ruling Political Party.
Second, he was part of a historic moment at the book launch on Tuesday, when he and a handful of leftists reunited with their long-time political foe, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
There certainly appeared to be no animosity between Mr Fong and MM Lee. The two smiled, exchanged warm handshakes, posed for photos and engaged in polite conversation.
Reflecting on their chat the day after, Mr Fong stresses that what was said did not matter. 'The words are not important. The main thing is the gesture, to show that we are all sincere about meeting each other again. I felt it was a very happy occasion,' he says.
Mr Fong's willingness to let go of the past was reflected in his readiness to meet and talk to the book's authors.
The 692-page book is written by three Straits Times journalists: Mr Sonny Yap, Mr Richard Lim and Mr Leong Weng Kam.
Of the numerous former leftists they approached for an interview, many rebuffed them, thinking the book would be a piece of propaganda used to vilify them.
But there was no hint of any reluctance from Mr Fong. He agreed to meet them, and even gave the team the names of people who were deported and are now living in Hong Kong.
Having read a draft copy of the book, he says he is happy it did him justice.
'I think it is quite impartial. The writers have done their duty. At least this book gives people a different view.'
However, getting to meet Mr Fong is one thing. Getting him to open up is a separate matter altogether.
Mr Leong recalls that it took the team almost a year to build up their relationship with him to a point where he could be comfortable with them.
The private Mr Fong
MR FONG'S reticence could be nailed down to sheer force of habit after numerous jail terms in the past, he says.
'He is very experienced at being interrogated. So maybe that's why he is very guarded,' adds Mr Leong.
Indeed for each question posed to him, he paused, thought it through and gave a short to-the-point answer.
But that is not to say Mr Fong made for a boring interviewee. Far from that. The chats were spiced up because they often turned out to be family affairs.
On the morning Insight visited Mr Fong at home, his wife, 73-year-old Chen Poh Cheng, joined in the chat.
Mr Fong sat at the dining table while Madam Chen sat a short distance away on the living room sofa, leafing through a newspaper but evidently listening to every word.
At different times during the interview, she would interject with her own opinion or to correct an answer she thought was wrong.
Madam Chen, a former trade unionist like her husband, is known to be a firebrand. So much so that in her earlier days, this tanned woman was known as the 'Black Peony'. The nickname - derived from a rare flower - denotes ferocity and boldness, not necessarily in a good way.
The two were childhood friends. They started dating in 1953 and married in 1960.
It is clear she is a source of strength for Mr Fong and he credits her for keeping the family in order through their difficulties.
And there have been many.
Six months after their eldest child, a daughter, was born in 1962, he was arrested in Operation Cold Store.
Even after his release, she had to be the one to hold everything together. Their three children were all schooled in Singapore, but only Madam Chen could participate in their school life as Mr Fong was forced to live in Johor Baru. He was banned from entering Singapore until 1990.
Recalls Mr Otto Fong, 41, the couple's youngest child: 'It was a heavy burden for her. She helped him with his business and maintained our Singapore lives. Anything to do with school, she had to be the one to attend because he could not enter Singapore.'
And so together, the quiet old man in the dining room and the Black Peony in the living room laid out their side of the story.
The public Mr Fong
THERE are two events people tend to connect the name Fong Swee Suan with.
The first is the Hock Lee bus riots, and the second is Operation Cold Store.
Both were traumatic events in Mr Fong's life. They landed him in jail, with the latter effectively ending his political career.
The infamous bus riots remain one of the bloodiest protests in Singapore's history.
Four people were killed, including a volunteer constable who was brutally hacked with a garden hoe and an American journalist who was beaten to death by the mob.
In a chapter titled The Night When Singapore Went Mad in Men In White, Mr S. Rajaratnam described it as the 'first demonstration of the ruthlessness of the communists and their capacity to unleash violence in Singapore...'
At the time the bus workers took to the streets, Mr Fong was the secretary-general of the Singapore Bus Workers Union (SBWU).
Though he does not deny responsibility for the strikes that ultimately led to the riots, he says the employers also have some of the blood on their hands.
The management of the Hock Lee Amalgamated Bus Company, he said, in carrying out a mass sacking of SBWU workers, left them with little choice.
'The management was the one who initiated the strike. We never wanted it,' he says.
Still, no one imagined the strikes would end in riots.
'I thought the government would step in,' adds Mr Fong.
The whole episode began as a power struggle between Hock Lee bus company and the SBWU.
The management, in a bid to reduce the influence of SBWU, tried to get new employees to join a rival union instead of letting all workers join the SBWU.
According to Mr Fong, when sufficient new employees were recruited, 229 SBWU members were sacked and replaced. The union launched its first protest, a 24-hour hunger strike.
Matters would escalate in the following days.
For his role in the riots, Mr Fong was arrested and detained for 45 days by the Labour Front government of David Marshall.
He was released, only to be rearrested a year later when he was involved in more riots, this time involving Chinese middle school students protesting against some of the government's aggressive anti-communist measures.
In 1959, as part of a deal brokered by Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Mr Fong was released.
He became political secretary to Labour and Law Minister K.M. Byrne, but was soon transferred to the same position in the deputy prime minister's office after he criticised government policies.
Cracks that would ultimately lead to Mr Fong leaving the party were beginning to show.
Throughout his time as a unionist and politician, Mr Fong was a close ally of Mr Lim Chin Siong, who died in 1996.
Mr Lim would go on to lead the breakaway group from the PAP and form the Barisan Sosialis.
The two met when they were classmates in Chinese High School in 1949. So close were they that they were often referred to as nan xiong nan di (Chinese for brothers who went through thick and thin together).
In the book, Mr Fong says they had much in common.
'We were both ardent anti-colonialists and we were both fascinated by the surge of national movements in Asia and Africa,' he told the authors.
In 1961, the two of them quit the PAP and formed the Barisan Sosialis.
One commonly cited reason for the split was that leftists like Mr Fong were against the idea of a merger with Malaysia.
However, he tells Insight he was never against the idea. He simply did not think the conditions were right.
'I was never anti-Malaysia. We all wanted the same thing, we just had different approaches. I just said that before you merge, the criteria must be set, we must have citizenship, we must have Parliament representation, then we come together. If not, it won't last long,' he says.
Not that he derived much joy when Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia. He says he still feels the two countries should merge again some day.
'I don't really see a lot of division between the two countries,' he says.
Is he a communist?
THE other major ideological difference cited between the leftists and the PAP was that of communism.
However, asked if he considers himself a communist, Mr Fong smiles.
'In Malaysia at that time, there were very few people who were not pro-left, but it's very difficult to be communist,' he says.
For the leftists, being a communist means being approved for membership by the Malayan Communist Party.
Pro-left or communist though, Mr Fong was rounded up along with more than 100 others in Operation Cold Store.
The massive operation was aimed at putting communists and suspected communists behind bars.
It wiped out much of the Barisan and served to effectively end Mr Fong's involvement in politics.
By the time he was released from detention in Malaysia some 41/2 years later, he says, it was too late to start all over again. At any rate, he was barred from entering Singapore.
So he got down to rebuilding his life. He went to work in Kuala Lumpur for a company dealing with sugar cane.
He later moved to Johor Baru, where he started a business selling small industrial machines.
His family moved across the Causeway to be with him and his children made a daily commute in and out of the country to attend school in Singapore. It meant a three-hour trip, twice a day.
It is this inconvenience, curiously enough, that Mr Fong talks about when he says he paid a heavy price for his role in politics.
He laments the suffering of his children and wife, but not his own in detention and interrogation.
The entry ban was lifted in 1990 and he returned to Singapore in 1998 after retiring.
Seemingly at peace
IT SEEMS almost mind-boggling that someone who went through what he did bears no grudges.
Over and over again during the interview, Mr Fong repeats that not only was everything forgiven, but also there really was nothing to be angry about in the first place.
He says: 'This is politics. This is what happens. But once we can survive and look after our families, that's all that's important.'
'Angry also useless,' adds Madam Chen from the living room sofa.
Their son Otto, a comic artist, says he has noticed this tone from his father in recent years.
'He never sounded bitter. Even when he told us about it, he always spoke calmly. The trauma was never transferred to the children,' he says.
If there was any hint that he harboured some ill-feelings, it came in the form of exclamations when he was having a bad day.
'Sometimes out of frustration he would say, 'If only these things didn't happen to me',' recalls the younger Mr Fong.
But even those faded away.
Says Mr Otto Fong: 'In the past 10 years, there's definitely been a more reconciliatory tone. He says that everybody was idealistic then and everybody has their own point of view. And he acknow-ledges that Singapore has got to a point where it is a good place.'
Indeed, the elder Mr Fong seems to be genuinely at peace with all that has happened.
Asked if he has any regrets, he thinks for a while and replies that there is only one.
'The only regret is that I achieved very little. I did not contribute enough,' he says.
Not surprisingly, he refuses to be drawn on any what if.
A chapter in Men In White ponders the question of what would have happened if the Barisan had won the 1963 elections.
But when this poser is put to Mr Fong, his response is simple: 'I don't want to guess, because even if we were in power, we don't know what would happen. There is no point thinking about it.'
jeremyau@sph.com.sg
It has been a big week for former leftist politician Fong Swee Suan. On Tuesday, he reunited with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, some 50 years after they crossed swords in Parliament. They were there for the launch of the book, Men In White, which features both their stories. Insight speaks to Mr Fong, an influential figure in the early days of the PAP, for his thoughts on the meeting with a foe from the past as well as a life full of ups and downs.
By Jeremy Au Yong
WHEN talking about Mr Fong Swee Suan, it is difficult to avoid wandering into the 'what ifs'. What if this founding member of the People's Action party (PAP) never broke away to join the Barisan Sosialis party? What if the Barisan had succeeded in wresting power from the PAP?
Pass the genial Mr Fong on the street, and most people would not bat an eyelid. In his typical neatly pressed short-sleeved shirt and pants, the 78-year-old looks like any senior going about his daily business.
Few would realise that this is a man who - but for a series of what ifs - could have been one of Singapore's top political leaders.
He was once in the upper echelons of the PAP leadership. In 1954, he was one of the 14 founding members of the PAP, among whom were Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Goh Keng Swee and the late S. Rajaratnam. He had also served as a political secretary in the PAP government.
Yet none of the what ifs seems to bother Mr Fong. Speaking at his Bukit Panjang flat, he betrays no resentment or bitterness over what happened to him.
He tells of his arrests - once in connection with the Hock Lee bus riots in 1955 and another as a suspected communist sympathiser in 1963's Operation Cold Store - calmly and matter-of-factly, the way one might describe a bout of chicken pox.
Today, Mr Fong is back in the news for two reasons. First, he is featured prominently in a new book about the history of the PAP called Men In White: The Untold Story of Singapore's Ruling Political Party.
Second, he was part of a historic moment at the book launch on Tuesday, when he and a handful of leftists reunited with their long-time political foe, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
There certainly appeared to be no animosity between Mr Fong and MM Lee. The two smiled, exchanged warm handshakes, posed for photos and engaged in polite conversation.
Reflecting on their chat the day after, Mr Fong stresses that what was said did not matter. 'The words are not important. The main thing is the gesture, to show that we are all sincere about meeting each other again. I felt it was a very happy occasion,' he says.
Mr Fong's willingness to let go of the past was reflected in his readiness to meet and talk to the book's authors.
The 692-page book is written by three Straits Times journalists: Mr Sonny Yap, Mr Richard Lim and Mr Leong Weng Kam.
Of the numerous former leftists they approached for an interview, many rebuffed them, thinking the book would be a piece of propaganda used to vilify them.
But there was no hint of any reluctance from Mr Fong. He agreed to meet them, and even gave the team the names of people who were deported and are now living in Hong Kong.
Having read a draft copy of the book, he says he is happy it did him justice.
'I think it is quite impartial. The writers have done their duty. At least this book gives people a different view.'
However, getting to meet Mr Fong is one thing. Getting him to open up is a separate matter altogether.
Mr Leong recalls that it took the team almost a year to build up their relationship with him to a point where he could be comfortable with them.
The private Mr Fong
MR FONG'S reticence could be nailed down to sheer force of habit after numerous jail terms in the past, he says.
'He is very experienced at being interrogated. So maybe that's why he is very guarded,' adds Mr Leong.
Indeed for each question posed to him, he paused, thought it through and gave a short to-the-point answer.
But that is not to say Mr Fong made for a boring interviewee. Far from that. The chats were spiced up because they often turned out to be family affairs.
On the morning Insight visited Mr Fong at home, his wife, 73-year-old Chen Poh Cheng, joined in the chat.
Mr Fong sat at the dining table while Madam Chen sat a short distance away on the living room sofa, leafing through a newspaper but evidently listening to every word.
At different times during the interview, she would interject with her own opinion or to correct an answer she thought was wrong.
Madam Chen, a former trade unionist like her husband, is known to be a firebrand. So much so that in her earlier days, this tanned woman was known as the 'Black Peony'. The nickname - derived from a rare flower - denotes ferocity and boldness, not necessarily in a good way.
The two were childhood friends. They started dating in 1953 and married in 1960.
It is clear she is a source of strength for Mr Fong and he credits her for keeping the family in order through their difficulties.
And there have been many.
Six months after their eldest child, a daughter, was born in 1962, he was arrested in Operation Cold Store.
Even after his release, she had to be the one to hold everything together. Their three children were all schooled in Singapore, but only Madam Chen could participate in their school life as Mr Fong was forced to live in Johor Baru. He was banned from entering Singapore until 1990.
Recalls Mr Otto Fong, 41, the couple's youngest child: 'It was a heavy burden for her. She helped him with his business and maintained our Singapore lives. Anything to do with school, she had to be the one to attend because he could not enter Singapore.'
And so together, the quiet old man in the dining room and the Black Peony in the living room laid out their side of the story.
The public Mr Fong
THERE are two events people tend to connect the name Fong Swee Suan with.
The first is the Hock Lee bus riots, and the second is Operation Cold Store.
Both were traumatic events in Mr Fong's life. They landed him in jail, with the latter effectively ending his political career.
The infamous bus riots remain one of the bloodiest protests in Singapore's history.
Four people were killed, including a volunteer constable who was brutally hacked with a garden hoe and an American journalist who was beaten to death by the mob.
In a chapter titled The Night When Singapore Went Mad in Men In White, Mr S. Rajaratnam described it as the 'first demonstration of the ruthlessness of the communists and their capacity to unleash violence in Singapore...'
At the time the bus workers took to the streets, Mr Fong was the secretary-general of the Singapore Bus Workers Union (SBWU).
Though he does not deny responsibility for the strikes that ultimately led to the riots, he says the employers also have some of the blood on their hands.
The management of the Hock Lee Amalgamated Bus Company, he said, in carrying out a mass sacking of SBWU workers, left them with little choice.
'The management was the one who initiated the strike. We never wanted it,' he says.
Still, no one imagined the strikes would end in riots.
'I thought the government would step in,' adds Mr Fong.
The whole episode began as a power struggle between Hock Lee bus company and the SBWU.
The management, in a bid to reduce the influence of SBWU, tried to get new employees to join a rival union instead of letting all workers join the SBWU.
According to Mr Fong, when sufficient new employees were recruited, 229 SBWU members were sacked and replaced. The union launched its first protest, a 24-hour hunger strike.
Matters would escalate in the following days.
For his role in the riots, Mr Fong was arrested and detained for 45 days by the Labour Front government of David Marshall.
He was released, only to be rearrested a year later when he was involved in more riots, this time involving Chinese middle school students protesting against some of the government's aggressive anti-communist measures.
In 1959, as part of a deal brokered by Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Mr Fong was released.
He became political secretary to Labour and Law Minister K.M. Byrne, but was soon transferred to the same position in the deputy prime minister's office after he criticised government policies.
Cracks that would ultimately lead to Mr Fong leaving the party were beginning to show.
Throughout his time as a unionist and politician, Mr Fong was a close ally of Mr Lim Chin Siong, who died in 1996.
Mr Lim would go on to lead the breakaway group from the PAP and form the Barisan Sosialis.
The two met when they were classmates in Chinese High School in 1949. So close were they that they were often referred to as nan xiong nan di (Chinese for brothers who went through thick and thin together).
In the book, Mr Fong says they had much in common.
'We were both ardent anti-colonialists and we were both fascinated by the surge of national movements in Asia and Africa,' he told the authors.
In 1961, the two of them quit the PAP and formed the Barisan Sosialis.
One commonly cited reason for the split was that leftists like Mr Fong were against the idea of a merger with Malaysia.
However, he tells Insight he was never against the idea. He simply did not think the conditions were right.
'I was never anti-Malaysia. We all wanted the same thing, we just had different approaches. I just said that before you merge, the criteria must be set, we must have citizenship, we must have Parliament representation, then we come together. If not, it won't last long,' he says.
Not that he derived much joy when Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia. He says he still feels the two countries should merge again some day.
'I don't really see a lot of division between the two countries,' he says.
Is he a communist?
THE other major ideological difference cited between the leftists and the PAP was that of communism.
However, asked if he considers himself a communist, Mr Fong smiles.
'In Malaysia at that time, there were very few people who were not pro-left, but it's very difficult to be communist,' he says.
For the leftists, being a communist means being approved for membership by the Malayan Communist Party.
Pro-left or communist though, Mr Fong was rounded up along with more than 100 others in Operation Cold Store.
The massive operation was aimed at putting communists and suspected communists behind bars.
It wiped out much of the Barisan and served to effectively end Mr Fong's involvement in politics.
By the time he was released from detention in Malaysia some 41/2 years later, he says, it was too late to start all over again. At any rate, he was barred from entering Singapore.
So he got down to rebuilding his life. He went to work in Kuala Lumpur for a company dealing with sugar cane.
He later moved to Johor Baru, where he started a business selling small industrial machines.
His family moved across the Causeway to be with him and his children made a daily commute in and out of the country to attend school in Singapore. It meant a three-hour trip, twice a day.
It is this inconvenience, curiously enough, that Mr Fong talks about when he says he paid a heavy price for his role in politics.
He laments the suffering of his children and wife, but not his own in detention and interrogation.
The entry ban was lifted in 1990 and he returned to Singapore in 1998 after retiring.
Seemingly at peace
IT SEEMS almost mind-boggling that someone who went through what he did bears no grudges.
Over and over again during the interview, Mr Fong repeats that not only was everything forgiven, but also there really was nothing to be angry about in the first place.
He says: 'This is politics. This is what happens. But once we can survive and look after our families, that's all that's important.'
'Angry also useless,' adds Madam Chen from the living room sofa.
Their son Otto, a comic artist, says he has noticed this tone from his father in recent years.
'He never sounded bitter. Even when he told us about it, he always spoke calmly. The trauma was never transferred to the children,' he says.
If there was any hint that he harboured some ill-feelings, it came in the form of exclamations when he was having a bad day.
'Sometimes out of frustration he would say, 'If only these things didn't happen to me',' recalls the younger Mr Fong.
But even those faded away.
Says Mr Otto Fong: 'In the past 10 years, there's definitely been a more reconciliatory tone. He says that everybody was idealistic then and everybody has their own point of view. And he acknow-ledges that Singapore has got to a point where it is a good place.'
Indeed, the elder Mr Fong seems to be genuinely at peace with all that has happened.
Asked if he has any regrets, he thinks for a while and replies that there is only one.
'The only regret is that I achieved very little. I did not contribute enough,' he says.
Not surprisingly, he refuses to be drawn on any what if.
A chapter in Men In White ponders the question of what would have happened if the Barisan had won the 1963 elections.
But when this poser is put to Mr Fong, his response is simple: 'I don't want to guess, because even if we were in power, we don't know what would happen. There is no point thinking about it.'
jeremyau@sph.com.sg
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The PAP story, blemishes and all
The PAP story, blemishes and all
Speech by Dr Tony Tan, chairman of Singapore Press Holdings, at the book launch
What is Men In White all about? How different is it from previous books on Singapore's ruling political party?
Let me clarify what the book is not.
It is not a re-telling of Singapore's transformation from Third World ghetto to First World city, a story which Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew so vividly documented in his memoirs. It is also not about the PAP Government and the art of policy-making.
Men In White is the untold story of the rise, fall, capture, split and resurgence of one of the world's most successful and longest ruling political parties, a story narrated for the first time through the voices of the victors and the vanquished as well as eyewitnesses to its unfolding history.
It is untold because many of these voices had not been heard in earlier books on the PAP - the voices of former PAP stalwarts and grassroots activists and their adversaries.
The story is untold because the voices of the Mandarin- and dialect-speaking, Malay-speaking and Tamil-speaking cast of characters often overlooked are also aired for the first time.
The result is a story of the PAP, warts, blemishes and all.
It is a story which details the ups and downs and twists and turns of the PAP and the pivotal moments in its history. It is a story which combines political theatre with human drama.
It tells of friends who turned foes when they found themselves on different sides of the ideological divide and of ordinary people who rose to meet extraordinary challenges in extraordinary times.
This book marks the culmination of a seven-year journey for our project team led by former SPH editor-in-chief Cheong Yip Seng and later by Straits Times editor Han Fook Kwang.
It all started in May 2001 when then-Prime Minister and PAP secretary-general Goh Chok Tong broached the idea of a book to mark the 50th anniversary of PAP in 2004. Mr Goh and Mr Cheong agreed that it should not be a commemorative coffee-table book, and that it should be well-researched. More importantly, it should be non-partisan and not written for the PAP, but rather the authors' version of the PAP story.
When Mr Goh Chok Tong told then-Senior Minister Lee about the book, the latter said that it would make for compelling reading if it covered the views of all the players in the struggle - those for and against the PAP.
Mr Lee told the team: 'If you're going to tell my side of the story, then you might as well not write the book. This has to be your book.'
He stressed that the authors - Sonny Yap, Richard Lim and Leong Weng Kam - should get the facts right but stand by what they have written.
When the initial drafts were shown to him, he pointed out factual errors but did not question the narrative thread or request that any of the critical and contentious points surrounding him be taken out.
This approach meant keeping an open mind, unfettered by any preconceived notions. Just let the story unravel - through the voices of about 300 people interviewed and of some 200 oral history interviewees recorded in the National Archives as well as the voices resurrected from unpublished memoirs and declassified documents.
The challenge for the team lay in tracking down former political players lost in the fog of history. After locating them, the next great challenge was in cajoling and coaxing them to give their side of the story.
Many were initially sceptical if not cynical. Some were downright hostile, assuming that the book would be just a propaganda exercise.
Typical of their responses were: 'Why should I cooperate with you to do a book on the party whose government locked me up for so many years?
'Are you sure that whatever I tell you will be printed?'
Fortunately, most of the people contacted gave the writers the benefit of the doubt and agreed to be interviewed. Despite being on the losing side and spending years in detention, many former leftists betrayed little bitterness or rancour and extended full cooperation to the team.
Some of them are now with us in the chamber: Fong Swee Suan, Dominic Puthucheary, Lim Chin Joo, Chen Say Jame and Low Por Tuck.
Unfortunately, some had passed away since their interviews.
What proved to be a treasure trove of precious insights were the 200-odd oral history interviews released by the National Archives of Singapore.
They included the voices of Lee Kuan Yew and his wife Kwa Geok Choo, S. Rajaratnam, C.V. Devan Nair, E.W. Barker, Fong Sip Chee, Richard Corridon, Lord Selkirk, David Marshall, S. Woodhull, James Puthucheary, Ong Chang Sam, Soon Loh Boon and Chen Say Jame.
Apart from listening to hundreds of hours of oral history interview tapes, the researchers pored over reams of documents, scanned reels of microfilm, ploughed through volumes of Chinese and Malay newspapers and sought the help of libraries and government agencies for the required information.
The team was also fortunate in gaining access to confidential party documents such as PAP's Analysis of the 1984 General Election; declassified diplomatic records from British National Archives; Mr Lee Kuan Yew's correspondence in the 1950s before he became PM and unpublished papers and memoirs belonging to Francis Thomas, Maurice Baker, SR Nathan and others.
Singaporeans might ask: Why should we know the PAP story?
Since 1959, PAP has won 12 general elections making it one of the most successful and longest ruling elected parties in the world. The 55-year-old party has ruled Singapore for 50 years. So whether you are for or against PAP, knowing the history of the party would mean knowing the political development of Singapore.
As former leftist leader Fong Swee Suan said, modern Singapore and PAP are inseparable. Their stories are intertwined.
They say that history favours the victors but in Men In White the voices of the vanquished are also aired.
Many of the leftists and communists who found themselves on the wrong side of history were idealistic young men and women, fired up by the Chinese revolution and the rise of socialism, to fight against the colonialists and champion the plight of the working class and the poor. Their support for PAP in the early years contributed to the victory of the party in the 1959 elections.
In some way, belated as it may be, the book has accorded recognition to their roles and contributions in the political development of Singapore. Thanks to their inputs and insights, Men In White is a rounded and balanced account of the Singapore Story.
In relating the fortunes of Singapore's ruling political party, the book also highlights the values, convictions, ideals, instincts, beliefs and world views of the generation of politicians who laid the foundation for today's Singapore. Whether as protagonists or antagonists, they were fighting for the future of Singapore.
The reader will be struck by the idealism, integrity and self-sacrifice of the first generation of PAP and non-PAP leaders: Lee Kuan Yew charging little or no fees as lawyer for political activists and trade unionists; Goh Keng Swee bringing soap flakes on his overseas trips to do his own washing to save taxpayers' money; ministers and legislative assemblymen refusing to accept bribes; Francis Thomas requesting the Ministry of Education to drop his expatriate allowance after he became a Singapore citizen; and leftists leading an austere life which compelled PAP leaders to do likewise to win the hearts and minds of the people.
Indeed Men In White can be read as a tribute to the generation born before the war who suffered under British colonialism and Japanese occupation, endured unimaginable poverty and privations, underwent social and political upheaval, and yet were able to overcome the tears and the trauma to lay the foundation for a new nation.
If not for the thrift, frugality, hard work and tremendous sacrifices of the leaders and the people, the present generation would not enjoy the privilege of being the beneficiaries of Singapore's peace and prosperity today.
We believe that the book will be new grist for the mill, a source of reference for future writers, researchers and scholars to pursue new lines of enquiry and expand on the themes and issues raised in the book.
This huge project will not be in vain if the book helps to equip a new generation of readers to rethink the Singapore Story, overturn some longstanding assumptions, question some conventional wisdom and debunk some myths and taboos.
For the project team, it has been an epic journey into a long forgotten and fractious past.
Many of you present here have helped our team to bring the past to life again. We thank you for sharing your recollections of those turbulent days.
Whether you were on the side of the PAP or against the PAP or were bystanders and witnesses to unfolding history, you are honoured guests today.
Directly or indirectly, in one way or another, you have all helped to contribute to the political development and common good of Singapore and your voices deserve to be heard.
Speech by Dr Tony Tan, chairman of Singapore Press Holdings, at the book launch
What is Men In White all about? How different is it from previous books on Singapore's ruling political party?
Let me clarify what the book is not.
It is not a re-telling of Singapore's transformation from Third World ghetto to First World city, a story which Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew so vividly documented in his memoirs. It is also not about the PAP Government and the art of policy-making.
Men In White is the untold story of the rise, fall, capture, split and resurgence of one of the world's most successful and longest ruling political parties, a story narrated for the first time through the voices of the victors and the vanquished as well as eyewitnesses to its unfolding history.
It is untold because many of these voices had not been heard in earlier books on the PAP - the voices of former PAP stalwarts and grassroots activists and their adversaries.
The story is untold because the voices of the Mandarin- and dialect-speaking, Malay-speaking and Tamil-speaking cast of characters often overlooked are also aired for the first time.
The result is a story of the PAP, warts, blemishes and all.
It is a story which details the ups and downs and twists and turns of the PAP and the pivotal moments in its history. It is a story which combines political theatre with human drama.
It tells of friends who turned foes when they found themselves on different sides of the ideological divide and of ordinary people who rose to meet extraordinary challenges in extraordinary times.
This book marks the culmination of a seven-year journey for our project team led by former SPH editor-in-chief Cheong Yip Seng and later by Straits Times editor Han Fook Kwang.
It all started in May 2001 when then-Prime Minister and PAP secretary-general Goh Chok Tong broached the idea of a book to mark the 50th anniversary of PAP in 2004. Mr Goh and Mr Cheong agreed that it should not be a commemorative coffee-table book, and that it should be well-researched. More importantly, it should be non-partisan and not written for the PAP, but rather the authors' version of the PAP story.
When Mr Goh Chok Tong told then-Senior Minister Lee about the book, the latter said that it would make for compelling reading if it covered the views of all the players in the struggle - those for and against the PAP.
Mr Lee told the team: 'If you're going to tell my side of the story, then you might as well not write the book. This has to be your book.'
He stressed that the authors - Sonny Yap, Richard Lim and Leong Weng Kam - should get the facts right but stand by what they have written.
When the initial drafts were shown to him, he pointed out factual errors but did not question the narrative thread or request that any of the critical and contentious points surrounding him be taken out.
This approach meant keeping an open mind, unfettered by any preconceived notions. Just let the story unravel - through the voices of about 300 people interviewed and of some 200 oral history interviewees recorded in the National Archives as well as the voices resurrected from unpublished memoirs and declassified documents.
The challenge for the team lay in tracking down former political players lost in the fog of history. After locating them, the next great challenge was in cajoling and coaxing them to give their side of the story.
Many were initially sceptical if not cynical. Some were downright hostile, assuming that the book would be just a propaganda exercise.
Typical of their responses were: 'Why should I cooperate with you to do a book on the party whose government locked me up for so many years?
'Are you sure that whatever I tell you will be printed?'
Fortunately, most of the people contacted gave the writers the benefit of the doubt and agreed to be interviewed. Despite being on the losing side and spending years in detention, many former leftists betrayed little bitterness or rancour and extended full cooperation to the team.
Some of them are now with us in the chamber: Fong Swee Suan, Dominic Puthucheary, Lim Chin Joo, Chen Say Jame and Low Por Tuck.
Unfortunately, some had passed away since their interviews.
What proved to be a treasure trove of precious insights were the 200-odd oral history interviews released by the National Archives of Singapore.
They included the voices of Lee Kuan Yew and his wife Kwa Geok Choo, S. Rajaratnam, C.V. Devan Nair, E.W. Barker, Fong Sip Chee, Richard Corridon, Lord Selkirk, David Marshall, S. Woodhull, James Puthucheary, Ong Chang Sam, Soon Loh Boon and Chen Say Jame.
Apart from listening to hundreds of hours of oral history interview tapes, the researchers pored over reams of documents, scanned reels of microfilm, ploughed through volumes of Chinese and Malay newspapers and sought the help of libraries and government agencies for the required information.
The team was also fortunate in gaining access to confidential party documents such as PAP's Analysis of the 1984 General Election; declassified diplomatic records from British National Archives; Mr Lee Kuan Yew's correspondence in the 1950s before he became PM and unpublished papers and memoirs belonging to Francis Thomas, Maurice Baker, SR Nathan and others.
Singaporeans might ask: Why should we know the PAP story?
Since 1959, PAP has won 12 general elections making it one of the most successful and longest ruling elected parties in the world. The 55-year-old party has ruled Singapore for 50 years. So whether you are for or against PAP, knowing the history of the party would mean knowing the political development of Singapore.
As former leftist leader Fong Swee Suan said, modern Singapore and PAP are inseparable. Their stories are intertwined.
They say that history favours the victors but in Men In White the voices of the vanquished are also aired.
Many of the leftists and communists who found themselves on the wrong side of history were idealistic young men and women, fired up by the Chinese revolution and the rise of socialism, to fight against the colonialists and champion the plight of the working class and the poor. Their support for PAP in the early years contributed to the victory of the party in the 1959 elections.
In some way, belated as it may be, the book has accorded recognition to their roles and contributions in the political development of Singapore. Thanks to their inputs and insights, Men In White is a rounded and balanced account of the Singapore Story.
In relating the fortunes of Singapore's ruling political party, the book also highlights the values, convictions, ideals, instincts, beliefs and world views of the generation of politicians who laid the foundation for today's Singapore. Whether as protagonists or antagonists, they were fighting for the future of Singapore.
The reader will be struck by the idealism, integrity and self-sacrifice of the first generation of PAP and non-PAP leaders: Lee Kuan Yew charging little or no fees as lawyer for political activists and trade unionists; Goh Keng Swee bringing soap flakes on his overseas trips to do his own washing to save taxpayers' money; ministers and legislative assemblymen refusing to accept bribes; Francis Thomas requesting the Ministry of Education to drop his expatriate allowance after he became a Singapore citizen; and leftists leading an austere life which compelled PAP leaders to do likewise to win the hearts and minds of the people.
Indeed Men In White can be read as a tribute to the generation born before the war who suffered under British colonialism and Japanese occupation, endured unimaginable poverty and privations, underwent social and political upheaval, and yet were able to overcome the tears and the trauma to lay the foundation for a new nation.
If not for the thrift, frugality, hard work and tremendous sacrifices of the leaders and the people, the present generation would not enjoy the privilege of being the beneficiaries of Singapore's peace and prosperity today.
We believe that the book will be new grist for the mill, a source of reference for future writers, researchers and scholars to pursue new lines of enquiry and expand on the themes and issues raised in the book.
This huge project will not be in vain if the book helps to equip a new generation of readers to rethink the Singapore Story, overturn some longstanding assumptions, question some conventional wisdom and debunk some myths and taboos.
For the project team, it has been an epic journey into a long forgotten and fractious past.
Many of you present here have helped our team to bring the past to life again. We thank you for sharing your recollections of those turbulent days.
Whether you were on the side of the PAP or against the PAP or were bystanders and witnesses to unfolding history, you are honoured guests today.
Directly or indirectly, in one way or another, you have all helped to contribute to the political development and common good of Singapore and your voices deserve to be heard.
Another bit of history - Sept 9 2009
MORE than one for the album, this was a picture for the history books.
If not for the numerous photographs capturing the moment, many would have scarcely believed what took place yesterday in the Old Parliament House - in the same chamber where the People's Action Party (PAP) fought its fiercest battles with its breakaway faction, the Barisan Sosialis, in the early 1960s.
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, a PAP founder, exchanged smiles and warm handshakes with those who had been his rivals from the country's early years.
Among them were Mr Fong Swee Suan, Mr Dominic Puthucheary and Mr Lim Chin Joo, all of whom, despite their advancing age, looked in fine form.
At the launch of Men In White, a book chronicling the PAP's history, the conflicts and differences of half a century ago seemed all but forgotten.
The old foes agreed to stand together to have their picture taken. It was perhaps a fitting way to launch a book documenting their history: by creating another bit of history.
(From left: Madam Ho Puay Choo, Mr Teo Hock Guan, Mr Low Por Tuck, Mr Ong Chang Sam, Mr Fong Swee Suan, MM Lee, Dr Tony Tan, Mr Dominic Puthucheary and Mr Lim Chin Joo.)
Friends and foes under one roof
Former leftists and MM greet each other for the first time after decades
By Sue-Ann Chia , SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
IT WAS a historic moment with friends and foes gathered together under the same roof where they last met more than four decades ago - at the Old Parliament House
The occasion was the launch of a new book on the People's Action Party (PAP), which brought together Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his former political rivals.
Against the backdrop of the august chamber, Mr Lee rose to shake the hands of his one-time rivals: people like PAP founder turned Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan, and Mr Dominic Puthucheary, a Malaysian lawyer who was PAP assistant organising secretary before he joined the mass defection that led to the formation of the Barisan Sosialis in 1961.
Many of them were later detained or exiled by the PAP Government. Among the 10 or so former leftists present yesterday however, hardly any rancour was evident.
Instead, there were smiles as one by one, they greeted Mr Lee who then requested a group photo.
It was a kodak moment that former PAP leader and leftist unionist Chen Say Jame, 77, had been hoping for but missed as he stepped out for a toilet break.
Still, he returned to the chamber in time to say in Mandarin: 'Hello, do you remember me' to MM Lee who replied: 'Of course, I do. How are you?'
The poignancy of the bittersweet reunion was not lost on Mr Chen, who last saw Mr Lee in the House in 1961 - when the Legislative Assembly took a vote of confidence in the PAP Government. After some harrowing twists and turns, the PAP won eventually by a razor-thin margin of one vote.
Both men went their separate ways as the former PAP assistant secretary-general was detained in 1963 under Operation Cold Store, during which more than 100 leftist leaders were arrested.
When asked about the past, he said in Chinese: 'No point thinking too much, just let it go.'
About 100 guests attended the launch, most of them former and current politicians. Apart from MM Lee, no current Cabinet minister was present.
Mr Ong Pang Boon, PAP founder and Singapore's first Home Affairs Minister, declined to speak to the press apart from saying that he was last in the chamber in 1988. He stepped down as PAP MP that year.
Former Speaker of Parliament Tan Soo Khoon, who quit politics in 2006, also declined comment.
Former PAP MP Augustine Tan, who stepped down in 1991, described the gathering as a unique event, saying: 'Many historical figures are here, which is a once in a lifetime event. It is good as it can help bring some healing.'
Mr Teo Ser Luck, a 41-year-old serving PAP MP, added: 'MM and the leftists opposed each other; there may be some bitterness still. But to see them bring closure today was really the best moment.'
It was history in the making even as history was unveiled through the book, Men In White: The Untold Story Of Singapore's Ruling Political Party.
The book, published by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), chronicles the PAP's rise, fall, split and resurgence in the past 55 years since the party was formed in 1954.
It is written by three senior Straits Times journalists - Mr Sonny Yap, Mr Richard Lim and Mr Leong Weng Kam - who interviewed 300 people, went through 200 oral history interviews, and pored over confidential documents.
It was not an easy process as some interviewees were downright hostile, assuming that the book was a PAP propaganda exercise, the authors noted.
But they managed to persuade most of them to share their stories, resulting in a book which SPH chairman Tony Tan said was 'a story of the PAP, warts, blemishes and all'.
Dr Tan, who was Deputy Prime Minister until 2005, said in his speech: 'Whether you are for or against the PAP, knowing the history of the party would mean knowing the political development of Singapore and understanding how Singapore has evolved to what it is today.'
Men In White, he pointed out, captures alternative voices such as those of leftists and communists - some of whom were key players in the founding of the PAP. Many were giving their views for the first time.
'In some ways, belated as it may be, the book has accorded recognition to their roles and contributions in the political development of Singapore,' he said. With their input, the book provides a more 'rounded and balanced' account of Singapore's history.
He added that the book, which was seven years in the making, would not be in vain if it helped a new generation of readers to rethink the Singapore story.
It will also help 'overturn some longstanding assumptions, question some conventional wisdom and debunk some myths and taboos', he said.
To Mr Lim Chin Joo, however, Men In White marks 'just the beginning'.
The younger brother of the late Barisan Sosialis leader Lim Chin Siong believes more can be done. 'I hope more can be written as there are still plenty of stories that remain untold,' he told The Straits Times. 'If they are told, it may change the picture of the Singapore that is known to us. We owe this much to the younger generation. They ought to know everything, the whole story.'
Mr Lim, who was actively involved in left-wing student and trade union movements agitating for independence from the British, was arrested in the 1960s and spent nine years in detention.
He described it as a 'wonderful feeling' to be mingling with the other guests at yesterday's reception. 'After all this while, we can still be, and ought to be, friends. As far as I'm concerned, what we've done is not for personal interests but for the country.'
PAP founder-turned-Barisan leader Fong Swee Suan, who spent more than four years in detention under Operation Cold Store, was equally peaceable: 'I'm happy to have seen old friends. Like Mr Lee Kuan Yew...half a century and we haven't talked face-to-face.
'Today, I asked him how he is.'
sueann@sph.com.sg
If not for the numerous photographs capturing the moment, many would have scarcely believed what took place yesterday in the Old Parliament House - in the same chamber where the People's Action Party (PAP) fought its fiercest battles with its breakaway faction, the Barisan Sosialis, in the early 1960s.
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, a PAP founder, exchanged smiles and warm handshakes with those who had been his rivals from the country's early years.
Among them were Mr Fong Swee Suan, Mr Dominic Puthucheary and Mr Lim Chin Joo, all of whom, despite their advancing age, looked in fine form.
At the launch of Men In White, a book chronicling the PAP's history, the conflicts and differences of half a century ago seemed all but forgotten.
The old foes agreed to stand together to have their picture taken. It was perhaps a fitting way to launch a book documenting their history: by creating another bit of history.
(From left: Madam Ho Puay Choo, Mr Teo Hock Guan, Mr Low Por Tuck, Mr Ong Chang Sam, Mr Fong Swee Suan, MM Lee, Dr Tony Tan, Mr Dominic Puthucheary and Mr Lim Chin Joo.)
Friends and foes under one roof
Former leftists and MM greet each other for the first time after decades
By Sue-Ann Chia , SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
IT WAS a historic moment with friends and foes gathered together under the same roof where they last met more than four decades ago - at the Old Parliament House
The occasion was the launch of a new book on the People's Action Party (PAP), which brought together Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his former political rivals.
Against the backdrop of the august chamber, Mr Lee rose to shake the hands of his one-time rivals: people like PAP founder turned Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan, and Mr Dominic Puthucheary, a Malaysian lawyer who was PAP assistant organising secretary before he joined the mass defection that led to the formation of the Barisan Sosialis in 1961.
Many of them were later detained or exiled by the PAP Government. Among the 10 or so former leftists present yesterday however, hardly any rancour was evident.
Instead, there were smiles as one by one, they greeted Mr Lee who then requested a group photo.
It was a kodak moment that former PAP leader and leftist unionist Chen Say Jame, 77, had been hoping for but missed as he stepped out for a toilet break.
Still, he returned to the chamber in time to say in Mandarin: 'Hello, do you remember me' to MM Lee who replied: 'Of course, I do. How are you?'
The poignancy of the bittersweet reunion was not lost on Mr Chen, who last saw Mr Lee in the House in 1961 - when the Legislative Assembly took a vote of confidence in the PAP Government. After some harrowing twists and turns, the PAP won eventually by a razor-thin margin of one vote.
Both men went their separate ways as the former PAP assistant secretary-general was detained in 1963 under Operation Cold Store, during which more than 100 leftist leaders were arrested.
When asked about the past, he said in Chinese: 'No point thinking too much, just let it go.'
About 100 guests attended the launch, most of them former and current politicians. Apart from MM Lee, no current Cabinet minister was present.
Mr Ong Pang Boon, PAP founder and Singapore's first Home Affairs Minister, declined to speak to the press apart from saying that he was last in the chamber in 1988. He stepped down as PAP MP that year.
Former Speaker of Parliament Tan Soo Khoon, who quit politics in 2006, also declined comment.
Former PAP MP Augustine Tan, who stepped down in 1991, described the gathering as a unique event, saying: 'Many historical figures are here, which is a once in a lifetime event. It is good as it can help bring some healing.'
Mr Teo Ser Luck, a 41-year-old serving PAP MP, added: 'MM and the leftists opposed each other; there may be some bitterness still. But to see them bring closure today was really the best moment.'
It was history in the making even as history was unveiled through the book, Men In White: The Untold Story Of Singapore's Ruling Political Party.
The book, published by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), chronicles the PAP's rise, fall, split and resurgence in the past 55 years since the party was formed in 1954.
It is written by three senior Straits Times journalists - Mr Sonny Yap, Mr Richard Lim and Mr Leong Weng Kam - who interviewed 300 people, went through 200 oral history interviews, and pored over confidential documents.
It was not an easy process as some interviewees were downright hostile, assuming that the book was a PAP propaganda exercise, the authors noted.
But they managed to persuade most of them to share their stories, resulting in a book which SPH chairman Tony Tan said was 'a story of the PAP, warts, blemishes and all'.
Dr Tan, who was Deputy Prime Minister until 2005, said in his speech: 'Whether you are for or against the PAP, knowing the history of the party would mean knowing the political development of Singapore and understanding how Singapore has evolved to what it is today.'
Men In White, he pointed out, captures alternative voices such as those of leftists and communists - some of whom were key players in the founding of the PAP. Many were giving their views for the first time.
'In some ways, belated as it may be, the book has accorded recognition to their roles and contributions in the political development of Singapore,' he said. With their input, the book provides a more 'rounded and balanced' account of Singapore's history.
He added that the book, which was seven years in the making, would not be in vain if it helped a new generation of readers to rethink the Singapore story.
It will also help 'overturn some longstanding assumptions, question some conventional wisdom and debunk some myths and taboos', he said.
To Mr Lim Chin Joo, however, Men In White marks 'just the beginning'.
The younger brother of the late Barisan Sosialis leader Lim Chin Siong believes more can be done. 'I hope more can be written as there are still plenty of stories that remain untold,' he told The Straits Times. 'If they are told, it may change the picture of the Singapore that is known to us. We owe this much to the younger generation. They ought to know everything, the whole story.'
Mr Lim, who was actively involved in left-wing student and trade union movements agitating for independence from the British, was arrested in the 1960s and spent nine years in detention.
He described it as a 'wonderful feeling' to be mingling with the other guests at yesterday's reception. 'After all this while, we can still be, and ought to be, friends. As far as I'm concerned, what we've done is not for personal interests but for the country.'
PAP founder-turned-Barisan leader Fong Swee Suan, who spent more than four years in detention under Operation Cold Store, was equally peaceable: 'I'm happy to have seen old friends. Like Mr Lee Kuan Yew...half a century and we haven't talked face-to-face.
'Today, I asked him how he is.'
sueann@sph.com.sg
3-in-1 History Book Reads like a Thriller - Sept 6
This is a history book that reads like a thriller.
There is a historical puzzle, unresolved.
How did Lee Kuan Yew become prime minister of Singapore?
There is plenty of cloak and dagger plotting.
There is Lee's chief aide - entrusted with the sensitive job of keeping tabs on party branches and the fledgling grassroots movement in the People's Association - who turned out to be a communist mole.
There is the Fort Canning bungalow, commandeered by Goh Keng Swee for the People's Action Party (PAP) legislative assemblymen, which became the hive of left-wing intrigue.
And there is the mystery of what really happened one night on a kelong - who plotted against the PAP leaders?
Unlike conventional history books, this one takes an unabashedly anecdotal approach, telling the story of the PAP through interviews with more than 300 people and 200 oral histories from the National Archives, augmented by published records.
It has no pretensions to be academically objective. Thankfully for the casual reader, it is also devoid of jargon.
But this book is no lightweight either. Instead, it is a serious attempt to add fresh perspectives to the well-told story of how the PAP came to power, in the struggle against colonialism, and after fighting the communists and the communalists.
If history is a dialogue between the present and the past, Men In White adds a collection of valuable voices to that dialogue. For the first time, members of the radical left-wing of the PAP are telling their side of the story.
The writers flew to the 'peace villages' of southern Thailand where former Malayan Communist Party (MCP) members made a life for themselves. They made their way to Malaysia, Hong Kong and China, ferreting out former activists, coaxing them out of their peaceful retirement lives to revisit the past. Thousands of pages of transcript and notes later, the material spanning some 50 years is condensed into a hefty 692-page tome.
This book was conceived to mark the PAP's 50th anniversary in 2004. In the end, the project took seven years, given the voluminous amount of work. From the start, senior PAP leaders Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew made it clear they did not want another potted history of the PAP recounting its successes. They wanted a more impartial account.
It is telling that Lee, in his introduction, distances himself from some of the authors' accounts and interpretation. He himself found the accounts of the early years riveting, as he realised for the first time just what his political adversaries were plotting.
Some readers used to a holistic narrative will find this book jarring. For the book is really three- books-in-one. As is common for a jointly authored project, the narrators' voices are quite different. The racy pace of Sonny Yap and Leong Weng Kam's prose match the breathless escapades of political infighting recounted in the first section, while Richard Lim's restrained, elegant style suits the sobriety of a story of a party in power. Part 3 is written in journalistic style, with quotes from interviewees to flesh out an issue, with minimal interpretation.
The first part on the PAP's early years up till independence is especially lively, replete with the passion and pathos of its times in retelling of the fight between the left-wing and the moderates in the PAP.
The most intriguing puzzle unearthed in this book is the question of how Lee became the prime minister of Singapore.
When the PAP swept to power in the May 1959 election, he was its secretary-general.
Ong Pang Boon and Toh Chin Chye told the authors they recalled that there was a meeting of the PAP's central executive committee (CEC) on who should be PM. There were reportedly two candidates - PAP treasurer Ong Eng Guan, who was the former mayor of Singapore, and Lee. The votes were split down the middle: six each. As party chairman presiding over the CEC vote, Toh decided on Lee. Apart from the authors' interviews with the two key players, some reports from that period circulate the story of that CEC vote.
So did Lee become PM by one vote?
He remembers no such vote. He was the party's secretary-general, leading the election. To him, it was understood and right that he should become PM. In the introduction to the book, he said he did not agree with the account of Toh and Ong Pang Boon.
Whose memory failed? The authors leave it to readers to draw their own conclusion.
One valuable aspect of Men In White is in breathing life and blood into two-dimensional characters relegated into footnotes in The Singapore Story. Which student of Singapore history has not wondered about Chan Sun Wing, whom Lee took as his chief aide and who turned out to be a communist plant?
Chan was instrumental in the left-wing's breakaway from the PAP to form the Barisan Sosialis to challenge the PAP in Parliament.
When interviewed in 2003, Chan did not see his move against the PAP and Lee as disloyalty to a mentor, but as loyalty to a political cause. Poignantly, he considered home to be neither Hat Yai where he worked as a secretary, nor Bang Lang where he had a small rubber holding, but Singapore from which he was in exile.
The authors also deal with a trenchant issue in Singapore's political history: What is a communist? The PAP tended to label the left-wing members communist or pro-communist, but many of those thus labelled strenuously deny it, including the enigmatic Lim Chin Siong, the left-wing leader whose Hokkien oratory helped the PAP win over the Chinese ground.
Shedding new light on Lim, the authors cite Internal Security Department information that Lim admitted he met communist leader Fang Chuang Pi three times. The suggestion in the book is that Lim may not have been a card-carrying member but he took orders from MCP leaders.
The second section brings the story of the PAP up to date, covering ground most readers will find familiar. The PAP had by the 1970s consolidated its power so effectively that challengers were few. The story is thus told largely through PAP eyes, without the kaleidoscopic insights of the first section. Highlights in this section are the accounts of how leadership renewal traumatised older MPs and activists, and insight into the mentoring programme Lee introduced to induct the second-generation leaders. Particularly breathtaking is the way he set about getting systematic feedback on their performance as MPs and as office-holders from veteran MPs and grassroots activists.
This section puts in context the Goh Chok Tong years when he served as prime minister from 1990 to 2004, although a more thorough treatment of this can be found in the recent Institute of Policy Studies publication, Impressions Of The Goh Chok Tong Years In Singapore.
The last section reiterates the PAP's core principles of governance: anti-corruption; commitment to multiracialism; distribution of wealth; and political philosophy. This section appears somewhat hastily done compared to the thorough groundwork for the first two sections. But through the use of anecdotes and apposite examples, the writers manage the difficult feat of breathing life into these well-debated topics. The chapter on race titled, Lee: You are equal to me, should be recommended reading for all students.
Recent years have seen more attempts at telling different versions of the Singapore stories.
Memoirs have been published by former MCP chief Chin Peng and former political detainee Said Zahari and former Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan. There are reports of unpublished memoirs by Lee Siew Choh and Chan Sun Wing, among others.
With the passage of time and as Singapore society matures, multifaceted perspectives of its early political history will emerge. This book offers another prism through which to view Singapore's modern history.
History is to a society what poetry is to an individual soul: It creates a structure of story and myth through which we understand one another and our place in this world. Every attempt to write history is flawed. Every history is mutable - till more facts are unearthed, till the next political movement comes about. Once we recognise this, we can get on with the business of trying to understand history, knowing that the accounts we read are at best a sepia-toned faded photograph of the multi-hued, multi-sensorial panorama of the past.
muihoong@sph.com.sg
Fleshing out historical figures
One valuable aspect of Men In White is in breathing life and blood into two-dimensional characters relegated into footnotes in The Singapore Story. Which student of Singapore history has not wondered about Chan Sun Wing (left), whom Lee Kuan Yew took as his chief aide and who turned out to be a communist plant?
There is a historical puzzle, unresolved.
How did Lee Kuan Yew become prime minister of Singapore?
There is plenty of cloak and dagger plotting.
There is Lee's chief aide - entrusted with the sensitive job of keeping tabs on party branches and the fledgling grassroots movement in the People's Association - who turned out to be a communist mole.
There is the Fort Canning bungalow, commandeered by Goh Keng Swee for the People's Action Party (PAP) legislative assemblymen, which became the hive of left-wing intrigue.
And there is the mystery of what really happened one night on a kelong - who plotted against the PAP leaders?
Unlike conventional history books, this one takes an unabashedly anecdotal approach, telling the story of the PAP through interviews with more than 300 people and 200 oral histories from the National Archives, augmented by published records.
It has no pretensions to be academically objective. Thankfully for the casual reader, it is also devoid of jargon.
But this book is no lightweight either. Instead, it is a serious attempt to add fresh perspectives to the well-told story of how the PAP came to power, in the struggle against colonialism, and after fighting the communists and the communalists.
If history is a dialogue between the present and the past, Men In White adds a collection of valuable voices to that dialogue. For the first time, members of the radical left-wing of the PAP are telling their side of the story.
The writers flew to the 'peace villages' of southern Thailand where former Malayan Communist Party (MCP) members made a life for themselves. They made their way to Malaysia, Hong Kong and China, ferreting out former activists, coaxing them out of their peaceful retirement lives to revisit the past. Thousands of pages of transcript and notes later, the material spanning some 50 years is condensed into a hefty 692-page tome.
This book was conceived to mark the PAP's 50th anniversary in 2004. In the end, the project took seven years, given the voluminous amount of work. From the start, senior PAP leaders Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew made it clear they did not want another potted history of the PAP recounting its successes. They wanted a more impartial account.
It is telling that Lee, in his introduction, distances himself from some of the authors' accounts and interpretation. He himself found the accounts of the early years riveting, as he realised for the first time just what his political adversaries were plotting.
Some readers used to a holistic narrative will find this book jarring. For the book is really three- books-in-one. As is common for a jointly authored project, the narrators' voices are quite different. The racy pace of Sonny Yap and Leong Weng Kam's prose match the breathless escapades of political infighting recounted in the first section, while Richard Lim's restrained, elegant style suits the sobriety of a story of a party in power. Part 3 is written in journalistic style, with quotes from interviewees to flesh out an issue, with minimal interpretation.
The first part on the PAP's early years up till independence is especially lively, replete with the passion and pathos of its times in retelling of the fight between the left-wing and the moderates in the PAP.
The most intriguing puzzle unearthed in this book is the question of how Lee became the prime minister of Singapore.
When the PAP swept to power in the May 1959 election, he was its secretary-general.
Ong Pang Boon and Toh Chin Chye told the authors they recalled that there was a meeting of the PAP's central executive committee (CEC) on who should be PM. There were reportedly two candidates - PAP treasurer Ong Eng Guan, who was the former mayor of Singapore, and Lee. The votes were split down the middle: six each. As party chairman presiding over the CEC vote, Toh decided on Lee. Apart from the authors' interviews with the two key players, some reports from that period circulate the story of that CEC vote.
So did Lee become PM by one vote?
He remembers no such vote. He was the party's secretary-general, leading the election. To him, it was understood and right that he should become PM. In the introduction to the book, he said he did not agree with the account of Toh and Ong Pang Boon.
Whose memory failed? The authors leave it to readers to draw their own conclusion.
One valuable aspect of Men In White is in breathing life and blood into two-dimensional characters relegated into footnotes in The Singapore Story. Which student of Singapore history has not wondered about Chan Sun Wing, whom Lee took as his chief aide and who turned out to be a communist plant?
Chan was instrumental in the left-wing's breakaway from the PAP to form the Barisan Sosialis to challenge the PAP in Parliament.
When interviewed in 2003, Chan did not see his move against the PAP and Lee as disloyalty to a mentor, but as loyalty to a political cause. Poignantly, he considered home to be neither Hat Yai where he worked as a secretary, nor Bang Lang where he had a small rubber holding, but Singapore from which he was in exile.
The authors also deal with a trenchant issue in Singapore's political history: What is a communist? The PAP tended to label the left-wing members communist or pro-communist, but many of those thus labelled strenuously deny it, including the enigmatic Lim Chin Siong, the left-wing leader whose Hokkien oratory helped the PAP win over the Chinese ground.
Shedding new light on Lim, the authors cite Internal Security Department information that Lim admitted he met communist leader Fang Chuang Pi three times. The suggestion in the book is that Lim may not have been a card-carrying member but he took orders from MCP leaders.
The second section brings the story of the PAP up to date, covering ground most readers will find familiar. The PAP had by the 1970s consolidated its power so effectively that challengers were few. The story is thus told largely through PAP eyes, without the kaleidoscopic insights of the first section. Highlights in this section are the accounts of how leadership renewal traumatised older MPs and activists, and insight into the mentoring programme Lee introduced to induct the second-generation leaders. Particularly breathtaking is the way he set about getting systematic feedback on their performance as MPs and as office-holders from veteran MPs and grassroots activists.
This section puts in context the Goh Chok Tong years when he served as prime minister from 1990 to 2004, although a more thorough treatment of this can be found in the recent Institute of Policy Studies publication, Impressions Of The Goh Chok Tong Years In Singapore.
The last section reiterates the PAP's core principles of governance: anti-corruption; commitment to multiracialism; distribution of wealth; and political philosophy. This section appears somewhat hastily done compared to the thorough groundwork for the first two sections. But through the use of anecdotes and apposite examples, the writers manage the difficult feat of breathing life into these well-debated topics. The chapter on race titled, Lee: You are equal to me, should be recommended reading for all students.
Recent years have seen more attempts at telling different versions of the Singapore stories.
Memoirs have been published by former MCP chief Chin Peng and former political detainee Said Zahari and former Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan. There are reports of unpublished memoirs by Lee Siew Choh and Chan Sun Wing, among others.
With the passage of time and as Singapore society matures, multifaceted perspectives of its early political history will emerge. This book offers another prism through which to view Singapore's modern history.
History is to a society what poetry is to an individual soul: It creates a structure of story and myth through which we understand one another and our place in this world. Every attempt to write history is flawed. Every history is mutable - till more facts are unearthed, till the next political movement comes about. Once we recognise this, we can get on with the business of trying to understand history, knowing that the accounts we read are at best a sepia-toned faded photograph of the multi-hued, multi-sensorial panorama of the past.
muihoong@sph.com.sg
Fleshing out historical figures
One valuable aspect of Men In White is in breathing life and blood into two-dimensional characters relegated into footnotes in The Singapore Story. Which student of Singapore history has not wondered about Chan Sun Wing (left), whom Lee Kuan Yew took as his chief aide and who turned out to be a communist plant?
Why Dhana left Cabinet in 1992
Former National Development Minister S Dhanabalan left the Cabinet in September 1992. His reason for quitting, as he put it some 12 years later, was one of conviction.
'My philosophy is one where I need to have complete conviction about some key policies and if I have differences, it doesn't mean that I'm against the group. I still want to make sure the group succeeds, but I have to try and live with myself if I have some disagreements on some things,' he said.
He had different views on some government policies and although 'they were not so sharp that I wanted to leave immediately... I could see for myself it could pose problems in the future for the group and me'.
Then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong did not wish to go into the specifics, but in his interviews for this book, he revealed for the first time that Mr Dhanabalan was not comfortable with the way the PAP government had dealt with the Marxist group in 1987.
'At that time, given the information, he was not fully comfortable with the action which we took... His make-up is that of a very strong Christian so he felt uncomfortable and thought there could be more of such episodes in future. So he thought since he was uncomfortable, he'd better leave the Cabinet. I respected him for his view,' Mr Goh said.
'My philosophy is one where I need to have complete conviction about some key policies and if I have differences, it doesn't mean that I'm against the group. I still want to make sure the group succeeds, but I have to try and live with myself if I have some disagreements on some things,' he said.
He had different views on some government policies and although 'they were not so sharp that I wanted to leave immediately... I could see for myself it could pose problems in the future for the group and me'.
Then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong did not wish to go into the specifics, but in his interviews for this book, he revealed for the first time that Mr Dhanabalan was not comfortable with the way the PAP government had dealt with the Marxist group in 1987.
'At that time, given the information, he was not fully comfortable with the action which we took... His make-up is that of a very strong Christian so he felt uncomfortable and thought there could be more of such episodes in future. So he thought since he was uncomfortable, he'd better leave the Cabinet. I respected him for his view,' Mr Goh said.
'I was a block of wood So? It was the truth'
'I was a block of wood So? It was the truth'
In 1988, then PM Lee Kuan Yew said that his first choice as successor was Tony Tan not Goh Chok Tong. Later, he described Goh as 'wooden' and that he might have to see a psychiatrist about it. Singaporeans were stunned. So were Goh and his associates. Why did Lee make such a blunt public assessment? How did Goh feel about it?
Lee Kuan Yew might have accepted the second-generation leaders' choice of Goh Chok Tong as their leader in 1984 but he unsettled both them and the public four years later, at the National Day rally in August, when he made public his 1980 assessment of the five key men.
His blunt statement on how he thought Goh tried to please too many people when he should not and that his first choice as successor was Tony Tan, although he had known by 1984 that the latter was not interested in the job, shook the people.
Goh, who was 'puzzled and stunned' by the speech, remembered the awkwardness at the reception after the event. 'How would the people come and greet me? It was very awkward. They looked at me...they didn't know whether to smile or to sympathise with me,' he said.
His good friend Ahmad Mattar was furious, he said. He told Ahmad in jest: 'If the prime minister does this to me again next year, I'll walk out.'
'I'll walk out with you,' Ahmad said to him.
Goh's wife, equally puzzled, asked: 'Why did he say that?'
Lee caused yet another stir among the people a few days later - at a session with students from the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological Institute, now Nanyang Technological University - when he described Goh as 'wooden' and said that he might have to see a psychiatrist about it.
In pointing out how Goh could not convey through television and mass meetings what he could in individual face-to-face or small group discussions, he said: 'I have suggested to him (to seek) perhaps a bit of psychological adjustment, maybe (see) a psychiatrist...something holds him back. He is...before a mass audience...he gets wooden - which he is not. When you speak to him one-to-one, he has strong feelings. Get him on television, it's difficult (to see that). He has improved, I will say, about 20 per cent. He needs to improve by more than 100 per cent.'
Someone differently constituted from Goh could have been thrown on the mat by so harsh a public judgement and not get up after the count of 10 but not Goh. Looking back, he said simply: 'It did not hurt...I knew Mr Lee well. He's not a man to slam you for nothing. He was never personal. So I did not feel he wanted to insult me...He had his purpose in saying what he said. I think he was disappointed with me for my inability to mobilise the ground. So he wanted to get me to do something about it.'
He added: 'I knew myself. I was a block of wood. So? It was the truth. But I was prepared to take on the job. If I could not do the job, then so be it. That was my strength. I was not chasing after the job. If I were, if my ambition was to be prime minister, then I'd be furious that my chances had diminished.'
This did not prevent him from speculating that Lee could still have wanted Tan to be the successor although Tan and his peers had plumped for him. Lee could have made his less than favourable public assessment of Goh to see if the PAP cadres and MPs would reject him as a result.
If they did, then Tan, however reluctant he was, would have to take his place. Tan was well liked by the people, Goh said, but he believed he was more popular among the cadres than Tan since he had worked closely with them for many years.
As it turned out, it was Tony Tan and Lee Hsien Loong who led the cadres and the people to rally round Goh. At a PAP rally at the Singapore Conference Hall on Aug 21, Lee Hsien Loong made it clear that all the cabinet ministers and all the members of the party's central executive committee (CEC), except Lee Kuan Yew, worked for Goh Chok Tong.
'We acknowledged him as our leader and in factwe - that means the younger ministers - discussed it among ourselves and have decided that he'll be the next prime minister,' he said to loud applause from the party cadres.
'He brought many of us into politics, including me. If comrade Goh had not invited me to stand, I would not be in politics because I cannot volunteer,' he added.
At a community event in Sembawang on the same day, Tony Tan told reporters that the second-generation leaders had met after the 1984 general election and decided unanimously that Goh should lead them and take over from Lee eventually. 'I see no reason at all why that decision should be changed, and the task for all of us is to support Goh Chok Tong in his very difficult job,' he stressed.
Goh himself did not remain silent. At a National Day dinner at his Marine Parade ward a week after Lee's rally speech, he said to his constituents: 'I told the prime minister many times...I will not change my style. It is part of my temperament and personality, and I cannot change my personality or my temperament.
'But habits, if they are not so good habits and if they can be improved upon, certainly, I should change those habits. But style is part of my temperament. It cannot be changed.'
On Lee's point about his desire to please people, he said: 'I would not use the word 'please' to describe my attitude. I would use the word 'accommodate'. In other words, I listen, I talk, I try to persuade and try to bring as many people on board as possible...
'I regard this style of mine as a strength, not a weakness. Karate chops have to be executed when necessary. But I like to use them only sparingly.'
At the National Day rally speech, Lee had said that getting people to perform was not a matter of smiling and kissing babies and patting people on the back all the time. 'There are times when a very good, firm karate chop is necessary. And deliver it cleanly. Don't have two chops where one would do.'
Ong Keng Yong - who was Goh's press secretary from 1998 to 2002 when he left for Jakarta to head the Asean Secretariat, the central administrative organ for the group of Southeast Asian countries - observed that Goh would not reject any suggestion or idea outright, whether in the Cabinet, in community work or interacting with his staff.
'He would listen to the pros and cons, work out a balance and match it with his own opinion. In this disarming way, he would bring people around to a particular idea,' Ong said.
'He might be patient but no issue was left to stew for too long. If something had to be left on the burner for a slow boil, it would have been a deliberate decision...His style was (that) he would get into the deep end of the swimming pool with you and knock around a particular idea. Once you got out of the pool, you actually wanted to deliver results as quickly as possible. Because he had indulged you, he had listened to you, given you some ideas, polished some rough edges and then asked for action to be taken. He didn't need to give you a deadline. You knew you had failed him if he had to remind you of the task.'
Integrity and dedication
When Lee spoke to the students, he did elaborate on Goh's qualities.
He had no doubts about the latter's integrity and dedication, he said. Goh had shown that he could not be bought when he was head of the Neptune Orient Lines. He had to do business with very wealthy people, like shipping magnate Y.K. Pao, but he was not seduced by their way of life.
Since 1980, Goh had found 30 of the 61 candidates that PAP fielded in 1981 and 1984, and would field in the 1988 election. Most importantly, he was not afraid to pick able men, men who could be his contenders. Lee cited, in particular, his son Lee Hsien Loong and the Cambridge-trained biochemist Yeo Ning Hong.
Goh had first-class interpersonal skills but he was no softie. He was not afraid to make tough decisions and push them through in parliament after he had worked the ground, selling them to the people. In the case of the CPF cut and wage restraint during the 1985 recession, for instance, he and his peers spent three months talking to all the unions.
'They pulled it off. The workers accepted not only a 15 percentage point cut in the employers' contribution but also two years of wage restraint, which is a major triumph, not attempted anywhere else in the world,' Lee told the students.
But reading the newspaper reports on the event the following day, most people were drawn only to the sensational bit - that Goh was wooden and needed to see a psychiatrist.
For the many Singaporeans who wondered what Lee was up to in assessing his successor Goh in so public and blunt a fashion, he cleared the air a month later, at the PAP's lunchtime rally at Fullerton Square for the 1988 general election. He told the crowd that his recent candid assessment of Goh was 'not a bad gambit'.
Since he 'put up that balloon', Goh had become more natural on television and in front of mass audiences, he said. It was his duty to tell Singaporeans his honest assessment of Goh. At the same time, he wanted to decide, from the way Goh reacted, whether he could be his own man.
'I said: 'Speak up! Be yourself. If you are angry, say so!' The result? He's no longer inhibited. He can talk about his inability to react naturally with crowds and in the process, he has come through.'
He urged the people to give Goh and his team 'a ringing endorsement'.
In his interviews for this book, Lee elaborated on the reasons he made public his assessment of Goh. He said: 'I knew it would cause some discomfort. But this was a very critical question...it was choosing the right man for the job. I laid down my cards. They (the second-generation leaders) chose Goh Chok Tong. Well, he had got to make the effort.
'And because I said all those things, he felt uncomfortable. But I said to him: 'Look, you may not be a natural speaker but you've got to start learning, because you can't be a leader when you can't communicate.'
'I told him when I was doing my campaigning in 1960 and 1961, every lunchtime I was eating and learning Hokkien from scratch. And by the end of the campaign, I was able to make some speeches in Hokkien. So he was willing to do it. He knew he had to make the effort. And he made the effort. As the years progressed, he improved.'
The majority of the ethnic Chinese population in Singapore are descendants of immigrants who had come from the southern Chinese province of Fujian, where Hokkien is the principal dialect. In the 1960s, most of the people were uneducated, hence Lee's need to master Hokkien.
After Goh Keng Swee introduced national service in 1967, he found he had to form separate Hokkien-speaking platoons because many of the 18-year-olds could not understand the English and Malay instructions of their officers. It would take another two decades before the need for such platoons was made redundant, thanks to universal education.
'PUZZLED AND STUNNED'
Goh, who was 'puzzled and stunned' by the speech, remembered the awkwardness at the reception after the event. 'How would the people come and greet me? It was very awkward. They looked at me...they didn't know whether to smile or to sympathise with me,' he said.
'NOT A BAD GAMBIT'
For the many Singaporeans who wondered what Lee was up to in assessing his successor Goh in so public and blunt a fashion, he cleared the air a month later, at the PAP's lunchtime rally at Fullerton Square for the 1988 general election. He told the crowd that his recent candid assessment of Goh was 'not a bad gambit'.
In 1988, then PM Lee Kuan Yew said that his first choice as successor was Tony Tan not Goh Chok Tong. Later, he described Goh as 'wooden' and that he might have to see a psychiatrist about it. Singaporeans were stunned. So were Goh and his associates. Why did Lee make such a blunt public assessment? How did Goh feel about it?
Lee Kuan Yew might have accepted the second-generation leaders' choice of Goh Chok Tong as their leader in 1984 but he unsettled both them and the public four years later, at the National Day rally in August, when he made public his 1980 assessment of the five key men.
His blunt statement on how he thought Goh tried to please too many people when he should not and that his first choice as successor was Tony Tan, although he had known by 1984 that the latter was not interested in the job, shook the people.
Goh, who was 'puzzled and stunned' by the speech, remembered the awkwardness at the reception after the event. 'How would the people come and greet me? It was very awkward. They looked at me...they didn't know whether to smile or to sympathise with me,' he said.
His good friend Ahmad Mattar was furious, he said. He told Ahmad in jest: 'If the prime minister does this to me again next year, I'll walk out.'
'I'll walk out with you,' Ahmad said to him.
Goh's wife, equally puzzled, asked: 'Why did he say that?'
Lee caused yet another stir among the people a few days later - at a session with students from the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological Institute, now Nanyang Technological University - when he described Goh as 'wooden' and said that he might have to see a psychiatrist about it.
In pointing out how Goh could not convey through television and mass meetings what he could in individual face-to-face or small group discussions, he said: 'I have suggested to him (to seek) perhaps a bit of psychological adjustment, maybe (see) a psychiatrist...something holds him back. He is...before a mass audience...he gets wooden - which he is not. When you speak to him one-to-one, he has strong feelings. Get him on television, it's difficult (to see that). He has improved, I will say, about 20 per cent. He needs to improve by more than 100 per cent.'
Someone differently constituted from Goh could have been thrown on the mat by so harsh a public judgement and not get up after the count of 10 but not Goh. Looking back, he said simply: 'It did not hurt...I knew Mr Lee well. He's not a man to slam you for nothing. He was never personal. So I did not feel he wanted to insult me...He had his purpose in saying what he said. I think he was disappointed with me for my inability to mobilise the ground. So he wanted to get me to do something about it.'
He added: 'I knew myself. I was a block of wood. So? It was the truth. But I was prepared to take on the job. If I could not do the job, then so be it. That was my strength. I was not chasing after the job. If I were, if my ambition was to be prime minister, then I'd be furious that my chances had diminished.'
This did not prevent him from speculating that Lee could still have wanted Tan to be the successor although Tan and his peers had plumped for him. Lee could have made his less than favourable public assessment of Goh to see if the PAP cadres and MPs would reject him as a result.
If they did, then Tan, however reluctant he was, would have to take his place. Tan was well liked by the people, Goh said, but he believed he was more popular among the cadres than Tan since he had worked closely with them for many years.
As it turned out, it was Tony Tan and Lee Hsien Loong who led the cadres and the people to rally round Goh. At a PAP rally at the Singapore Conference Hall on Aug 21, Lee Hsien Loong made it clear that all the cabinet ministers and all the members of the party's central executive committee (CEC), except Lee Kuan Yew, worked for Goh Chok Tong.
'We acknowledged him as our leader and in factwe - that means the younger ministers - discussed it among ourselves and have decided that he'll be the next prime minister,' he said to loud applause from the party cadres.
'He brought many of us into politics, including me. If comrade Goh had not invited me to stand, I would not be in politics because I cannot volunteer,' he added.
At a community event in Sembawang on the same day, Tony Tan told reporters that the second-generation leaders had met after the 1984 general election and decided unanimously that Goh should lead them and take over from Lee eventually. 'I see no reason at all why that decision should be changed, and the task for all of us is to support Goh Chok Tong in his very difficult job,' he stressed.
Goh himself did not remain silent. At a National Day dinner at his Marine Parade ward a week after Lee's rally speech, he said to his constituents: 'I told the prime minister many times...I will not change my style. It is part of my temperament and personality, and I cannot change my personality or my temperament.
'But habits, if they are not so good habits and if they can be improved upon, certainly, I should change those habits. But style is part of my temperament. It cannot be changed.'
On Lee's point about his desire to please people, he said: 'I would not use the word 'please' to describe my attitude. I would use the word 'accommodate'. In other words, I listen, I talk, I try to persuade and try to bring as many people on board as possible...
'I regard this style of mine as a strength, not a weakness. Karate chops have to be executed when necessary. But I like to use them only sparingly.'
At the National Day rally speech, Lee had said that getting people to perform was not a matter of smiling and kissing babies and patting people on the back all the time. 'There are times when a very good, firm karate chop is necessary. And deliver it cleanly. Don't have two chops where one would do.'
Ong Keng Yong - who was Goh's press secretary from 1998 to 2002 when he left for Jakarta to head the Asean Secretariat, the central administrative organ for the group of Southeast Asian countries - observed that Goh would not reject any suggestion or idea outright, whether in the Cabinet, in community work or interacting with his staff.
'He would listen to the pros and cons, work out a balance and match it with his own opinion. In this disarming way, he would bring people around to a particular idea,' Ong said.
'He might be patient but no issue was left to stew for too long. If something had to be left on the burner for a slow boil, it would have been a deliberate decision...His style was (that) he would get into the deep end of the swimming pool with you and knock around a particular idea. Once you got out of the pool, you actually wanted to deliver results as quickly as possible. Because he had indulged you, he had listened to you, given you some ideas, polished some rough edges and then asked for action to be taken. He didn't need to give you a deadline. You knew you had failed him if he had to remind you of the task.'
Integrity and dedication
When Lee spoke to the students, he did elaborate on Goh's qualities.
He had no doubts about the latter's integrity and dedication, he said. Goh had shown that he could not be bought when he was head of the Neptune Orient Lines. He had to do business with very wealthy people, like shipping magnate Y.K. Pao, but he was not seduced by their way of life.
Since 1980, Goh had found 30 of the 61 candidates that PAP fielded in 1981 and 1984, and would field in the 1988 election. Most importantly, he was not afraid to pick able men, men who could be his contenders. Lee cited, in particular, his son Lee Hsien Loong and the Cambridge-trained biochemist Yeo Ning Hong.
Goh had first-class interpersonal skills but he was no softie. He was not afraid to make tough decisions and push them through in parliament after he had worked the ground, selling them to the people. In the case of the CPF cut and wage restraint during the 1985 recession, for instance, he and his peers spent three months talking to all the unions.
'They pulled it off. The workers accepted not only a 15 percentage point cut in the employers' contribution but also two years of wage restraint, which is a major triumph, not attempted anywhere else in the world,' Lee told the students.
But reading the newspaper reports on the event the following day, most people were drawn only to the sensational bit - that Goh was wooden and needed to see a psychiatrist.
For the many Singaporeans who wondered what Lee was up to in assessing his successor Goh in so public and blunt a fashion, he cleared the air a month later, at the PAP's lunchtime rally at Fullerton Square for the 1988 general election. He told the crowd that his recent candid assessment of Goh was 'not a bad gambit'.
Since he 'put up that balloon', Goh had become more natural on television and in front of mass audiences, he said. It was his duty to tell Singaporeans his honest assessment of Goh. At the same time, he wanted to decide, from the way Goh reacted, whether he could be his own man.
'I said: 'Speak up! Be yourself. If you are angry, say so!' The result? He's no longer inhibited. He can talk about his inability to react naturally with crowds and in the process, he has come through.'
He urged the people to give Goh and his team 'a ringing endorsement'.
In his interviews for this book, Lee elaborated on the reasons he made public his assessment of Goh. He said: 'I knew it would cause some discomfort. But this was a very critical question...it was choosing the right man for the job. I laid down my cards. They (the second-generation leaders) chose Goh Chok Tong. Well, he had got to make the effort.
'And because I said all those things, he felt uncomfortable. But I said to him: 'Look, you may not be a natural speaker but you've got to start learning, because you can't be a leader when you can't communicate.'
'I told him when I was doing my campaigning in 1960 and 1961, every lunchtime I was eating and learning Hokkien from scratch. And by the end of the campaign, I was able to make some speeches in Hokkien. So he was willing to do it. He knew he had to make the effort. And he made the effort. As the years progressed, he improved.'
The majority of the ethnic Chinese population in Singapore are descendants of immigrants who had come from the southern Chinese province of Fujian, where Hokkien is the principal dialect. In the 1960s, most of the people were uneducated, hence Lee's need to master Hokkien.
After Goh Keng Swee introduced national service in 1967, he found he had to form separate Hokkien-speaking platoons because many of the 18-year-olds could not understand the English and Malay instructions of their officers. It would take another two decades before the need for such platoons was made redundant, thanks to universal education.
'PUZZLED AND STUNNED'
Goh, who was 'puzzled and stunned' by the speech, remembered the awkwardness at the reception after the event. 'How would the people come and greet me? It was very awkward. They looked at me...they didn't know whether to smile or to sympathise with me,' he said.
'NOT A BAD GAMBIT'
For the many Singaporeans who wondered what Lee was up to in assessing his successor Goh in so public and blunt a fashion, he cleared the air a month later, at the PAP's lunchtime rally at Fullerton Square for the 1988 general election. He told the crowd that his recent candid assessment of Goh was 'not a bad gambit'.
Mobocracy
'I would much rather Harry got unseated and stayed out of politics'
While gangsters might be giving PAP cause for concern in Farrer Park in the 1955 election, the sight of Chinese students campaigning aggressively for Devan Nair was raising more than eyebrows.
In her letters to Goh Keng Swee in London, Mrs Lee expressed her reservations about the 'kids' and 'brats'. She complained about how they came to see Lee at all hours for advice, demanding for one statement or another to be issued to the press. When Lee refused to be pushed, they hinted that they could not help in the elections.
'I am not sorry Devan Nair lost in Farrer Park,' she told Goh, who was then involved in a tussle with pro-communist elements in the Malayan Forum. 'With Nair in legislative assembly, you would have far more trouble than you are having in the forum, and the PAP would become just an apologist for the 'freedom forces'.'
Referring to the Farrer Park defeat, she wrote: 'They had masses of socialist club boys there and masses of kids and their whole organisation collapsed on polling day. Now I hear they are waiting for Harry to be unseated on petition and then they will put Devan in Tanjong Pagar. They've got a ruddy hope.'
Two days after Lee won Tanjong Pagar in a landslide victory, his Democratic Party opponent Lam Thian challenged Lee's eligibility to sit in the assembly on the grounds that he had not lived in Singapore for the last 10 years, a Rendel requirement.
In London, Goh lobbied British MPs to sort out Lee's eligibility problem - Lee had spent three out of 10 years in Cambridge so technically he was not qualified. Eventually, the government declared that Malayan students studying abroad should be treated as eligible to stand as candidates. The petition was dropped and Lee went on to represent Tanjong Pagar for the next five decades.
All the politicking, however, was beginning to grate on Mrs Lee.
Evoking a tinge of despair, she said: 'Sometimes I would much rather Harry got unseated and stayed out of politics and lived quietly on the law. What's the use of it all?'
While gangsters might be giving PAP cause for concern in Farrer Park in the 1955 election, the sight of Chinese students campaigning aggressively for Devan Nair was raising more than eyebrows.
In her letters to Goh Keng Swee in London, Mrs Lee expressed her reservations about the 'kids' and 'brats'. She complained about how they came to see Lee at all hours for advice, demanding for one statement or another to be issued to the press. When Lee refused to be pushed, they hinted that they could not help in the elections.
'I am not sorry Devan Nair lost in Farrer Park,' she told Goh, who was then involved in a tussle with pro-communist elements in the Malayan Forum. 'With Nair in legislative assembly, you would have far more trouble than you are having in the forum, and the PAP would become just an apologist for the 'freedom forces'.'
Referring to the Farrer Park defeat, she wrote: 'They had masses of socialist club boys there and masses of kids and their whole organisation collapsed on polling day. Now I hear they are waiting for Harry to be unseated on petition and then they will put Devan in Tanjong Pagar. They've got a ruddy hope.'
Two days after Lee won Tanjong Pagar in a landslide victory, his Democratic Party opponent Lam Thian challenged Lee's eligibility to sit in the assembly on the grounds that he had not lived in Singapore for the last 10 years, a Rendel requirement.
In London, Goh lobbied British MPs to sort out Lee's eligibility problem - Lee had spent three out of 10 years in Cambridge so technically he was not qualified. Eventually, the government declared that Malayan students studying abroad should be treated as eligible to stand as candidates. The petition was dropped and Lee went on to represent Tanjong Pagar for the next five decades.
All the politicking, however, was beginning to grate on Mrs Lee.
Evoking a tinge of despair, she said: 'Sometimes I would much rather Harry got unseated and stayed out of politics and lived quietly on the law. What's the use of it all?'
Mrs Lee: People expect Lee to be cooing over baby Hsien Loong, but...(the Unions were more important) - ST Sept 6
It was a day etched in the memory of Mrs Lee Kuan Yew. She had just delivered her first child on Feb10, 1952 and her husband was visiting her in the maternity ward of Kandang Kerbau Hospital, now known as KK Women's and Children's Hospital.
As she recalled, Lee sounded elated when he told her about his first union job while cradling baby Hsien Loong. 'People would think he'd be cooing over the baby all the time instead of talking about union matters. But I think he was quite pleased at the prospect of acting for this union.'
She was referring to the Singapore Post and Telegraph Uniformed Staff Union, which was then locked in an acrimonious pay dispute with the colonial authorities. Several days earlier, union leaders Ismail Rahim and Perumal Govindasamy had visited Lee in his office and asked him to be their legal adviser.
Throughout the 13-day strike by the P and T union, as it was better known, which brought all mail services to a stop and unnerved British officialdom, Lee acted as legal adviser, official negotiator and eloquent spokesman - a high-profile role that was to catapult him into the headlines.
Basically, the dispute hinged on the difference between the government's offer of $90 and the postmen's demand of $100 on the maximum pay.
It was a difference of only $10. But when the sheer reasonableness of the demand was met by the sheer intransigence of the response, it was transformed into a cause celebre.
Despite the massive service disruptions, people supported the postmen. The press cheered. Even some of the pro-British legislative councillors sympathised with the strikers. Eventually, the government gave in to the union's demands.
The triumphant resolution of the strike projected Lee as a champion of exploited workers in the public eye and turned him into a household name. Requests for Lee to act as their legal adviser came pouring in from trade unions and associations which nursed similar grievances against the colonial masters. To the establishment, Lee became anathema.
Obviously, the lawyer was not in it for the money as the unions comprised lowly-paid workers who could barely afford to pay his legal expenses. If he really craved material rewards, he would have joined his contemporaries in servicing the big British trading houses and the Chinese banks, or doing lucrative conveyancing work.
In his memoirs The Singapore Story, Lee said that he accepted the postmen's case without asking for legal fees. In a letter to Lee, his boss John Laycock complained that the firm had 'suffered' from all his union cases and that it 'must not take on any more of these wage disputes'.
For an example of Lee's legal work, take this letter from Chan Tham Choon, general secretary of the Singapore City Council Services Union, to Lee dated March 7, 1956. It read: 'My executive council has noted that there is no fee to be charged for the advice and help you have given to the union, and I am directed to convey the union's appreciation of your kind attention in this matter.'
When Utusan Melayu journalist Samad Ismail was detained in 1951 for anti-British activities, his newspaper hired Lee as his lawyer. Living in retirement in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur in 2002, the grand old man of letters, whose controversial career straddled both sides of the Causeway, was livid at the recollection of another leading lawyer who demanded $15,000 for his case. How much did Lee charge? '$10, a token sum,' he cackled.
Former Straits Times news editor Felix Abisheganaden, who was acquainted with Lee in the 1950s and 1960s, noted that he hardly ever charged the unions for his work. 'You can never say that he was ever in his life after any kind of financial gain - never, never, never.'
If Lee was not in it for the money, then what was he in it for? To those who divined his thoughts and intentions, he was practising what he preached to his audience in his Malayan Forum speech in London: get involved in politics. And what better way to cut your political milk teeth than to take up the cudgels on behalf of underpaid workers?
Former student activist and unionist Chen Say Jame's observation was shared by many: 'Lee was influenced by the Labour Party in Britain when he was a student there. So he was naturally inclined to be pro-labour and to build his network and power base through the trade unions. Hence his willingness and eagerness to help the unions as legal adviser.'
Right from the start, noted former party chairman Toh Chin Chye, the trade union was recognised as an important source of support. 'It was the unions that provided the mass base. Lee Kuan Yew was the legal advisor, so he had a mass base.'
As Lee admitted, the free or almost-free legal service was extended to the unions when he was in Laycock and Ong. 'I was working there for a salary at that time, service free. I mean, even if I charged, it just went to the firm. Why should I charge them? John Laycock did not know. In the end I was working to get a following into the PAP! Had he known that, he would have stopped it.'
As she recalled, Lee sounded elated when he told her about his first union job while cradling baby Hsien Loong. 'People would think he'd be cooing over the baby all the time instead of talking about union matters. But I think he was quite pleased at the prospect of acting for this union.'
She was referring to the Singapore Post and Telegraph Uniformed Staff Union, which was then locked in an acrimonious pay dispute with the colonial authorities. Several days earlier, union leaders Ismail Rahim and Perumal Govindasamy had visited Lee in his office and asked him to be their legal adviser.
Throughout the 13-day strike by the P and T union, as it was better known, which brought all mail services to a stop and unnerved British officialdom, Lee acted as legal adviser, official negotiator and eloquent spokesman - a high-profile role that was to catapult him into the headlines.
Basically, the dispute hinged on the difference between the government's offer of $90 and the postmen's demand of $100 on the maximum pay.
It was a difference of only $10. But when the sheer reasonableness of the demand was met by the sheer intransigence of the response, it was transformed into a cause celebre.
Despite the massive service disruptions, people supported the postmen. The press cheered. Even some of the pro-British legislative councillors sympathised with the strikers. Eventually, the government gave in to the union's demands.
The triumphant resolution of the strike projected Lee as a champion of exploited workers in the public eye and turned him into a household name. Requests for Lee to act as their legal adviser came pouring in from trade unions and associations which nursed similar grievances against the colonial masters. To the establishment, Lee became anathema.
Obviously, the lawyer was not in it for the money as the unions comprised lowly-paid workers who could barely afford to pay his legal expenses. If he really craved material rewards, he would have joined his contemporaries in servicing the big British trading houses and the Chinese banks, or doing lucrative conveyancing work.
In his memoirs The Singapore Story, Lee said that he accepted the postmen's case without asking for legal fees. In a letter to Lee, his boss John Laycock complained that the firm had 'suffered' from all his union cases and that it 'must not take on any more of these wage disputes'.
For an example of Lee's legal work, take this letter from Chan Tham Choon, general secretary of the Singapore City Council Services Union, to Lee dated March 7, 1956. It read: 'My executive council has noted that there is no fee to be charged for the advice and help you have given to the union, and I am directed to convey the union's appreciation of your kind attention in this matter.'
When Utusan Melayu journalist Samad Ismail was detained in 1951 for anti-British activities, his newspaper hired Lee as his lawyer. Living in retirement in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur in 2002, the grand old man of letters, whose controversial career straddled both sides of the Causeway, was livid at the recollection of another leading lawyer who demanded $15,000 for his case. How much did Lee charge? '$10, a token sum,' he cackled.
Former Straits Times news editor Felix Abisheganaden, who was acquainted with Lee in the 1950s and 1960s, noted that he hardly ever charged the unions for his work. 'You can never say that he was ever in his life after any kind of financial gain - never, never, never.'
If Lee was not in it for the money, then what was he in it for? To those who divined his thoughts and intentions, he was practising what he preached to his audience in his Malayan Forum speech in London: get involved in politics. And what better way to cut your political milk teeth than to take up the cudgels on behalf of underpaid workers?
Former student activist and unionist Chen Say Jame's observation was shared by many: 'Lee was influenced by the Labour Party in Britain when he was a student there. So he was naturally inclined to be pro-labour and to build his network and power base through the trade unions. Hence his willingness and eagerness to help the unions as legal adviser.'
Right from the start, noted former party chairman Toh Chin Chye, the trade union was recognised as an important source of support. 'It was the unions that provided the mass base. Lee Kuan Yew was the legal advisor, so he had a mass base.'
As Lee admitted, the free or almost-free legal service was extended to the unions when he was in Laycock and Ong. 'I was working there for a salary at that time, service free. I mean, even if I charged, it just went to the firm. Why should I charge them? John Laycock did not know. In the end I was working to get a following into the PAP! Had he known that, he would have stopped it.'
'I was interrogated day and night for six months' - Sept 6 2009
'I was interrogated day and night for six months'
Fong Swee Suan was one of 113 people picked up under Operation Cold Store on Feb 2, 1963. The big sweep was planned to stop communists and suspected communists from undermining the proposed union between Malaya and Singapore, but the opposition saw it as a sinister move to destroy the left.
The knock on the door of a terrace house on Carlisle Road off Farrer Park came in the early hours of the morning.
As Fong Swee Suan rubbed the sleep off his eyes, he was astonished to see Chew Tong Li, his former neighbour and friend from his hometown in Johor, in a policeman's uniform toting a long gun. Memories of their basketball-playing days in Senggarang flashed through his mind.
But this was no courtesy visit. Chew was part of a team who had come to arrest the Barisan leader and radical trade unionist in an islandwide sweep dubbed Operation Cold Store on 2 February 1963.
Fong recalled: 'He stood there for a few minutes looking stunned. I told him: 'It's okay. You do your duty.' Then he said: 'Wah, it's you. How could it be you?''
Fong was driven in a car with several detainees from his home in Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. It was only when they stopped for lunch did he learn about the scale of the operation. After spending a night in the capital, he was taken to a forested area and kept in solitary confinement for six months.
Then he was packed off to another camp where he found himself in the same cell with fellow PAP founder-convenor and rural association head Chan Chiaw Thor. Fong and Chan were among the eight detainees released on 4 June 1959 as a condition for PAP's assumption of power after winning the elections.
As Fong recollected: 'It was a cement cell. Even the bed was made of cement. Except for a few books, nothing was supplied to us as they wanted to make sure we would not use a blanket or whatever to commit suicide.
'I was interrogated day and night for six months. I was asked about all my activities. They tried to find out if I had a communist connection. At night, they put an alarm clock outside my cell which rang every 15 minutes. I couldn't sleep.'
Other than Fong, the big names caught in the dragnet were Barisan CEC members Lim Chin Siong, Lim Hock Siew and Poh Soo Kai, and unionists S. Woodhull, James Puthucheary, Jamit Singh and Lim Shee Ping. In all, 113 people were rounded up, including 24 Barisan members, 21 trade union leaders, 17 Nanyang University (Nantah) students and graduates, seven members of rural associations, and five journalists.
However, all 13 Barisan legislative assemblymen and party chairman Lee Siew Choh were spared.
Planned by the Internal Security Council (ISC), the round-up was named Cold Store because it was meant to put communists and suspected communists 'away for a little while', explained a former Special Branch officer involved in the operation.
The PAP government told the public that ISC acted against the detainees for seeking to sabotage Malaysia and supporting the armed insurrection which broke out in Brunei on 8 December 1962. Led by Brunei Partai Rakyat leader A. M. Azahari, the revolt was aimed at foiling the entry of the Borneo territories into Malaysia, but it was crushed by British troops flown in from Singapore.
Barisan secretary-general Lim Chin Siong was accused of meeting Azahari in Singapore on the eve of the rebellion and conspiring to stage a simultaneous uprising in Singapore. Fong Swee Suan, however, strongly denied all these charges, saying that what Azahari and Barisan had in common was just the aim of getting rid of colonialism.
The big sweep took place against the backdrop of Confrontation or Konfrontasi launched by President Sukarno of Indonesia on 20 January 1963 to abort the proposed Malaysia union. The unofficial war, which combined military action, political subversion and infiltration of agents, was instigated by Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), or the Indonesian Communist Party, which was allied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP).
Toh Chin Chye maintained that Operation Cold Store was meant to pre-empt the communist united front from mounting any violence or creating any disorder in the closing stages of the establishment of Malaysia. 'Malaya could not allow Singapore to become the Cuba of Malaysia, a safe base from which MCP could launch a political offensive against Malaysia.'
The 'clean-up' was necessary, argued S. Rajaratnam, because of Indonesia's hostility and plans by communist parties in Malaya and the Borneo territories to disrupt Malaysia.
C. V. Devan Nair remembered discussing with Lee the need for such an operation in view of growing public opinion against Confrontation and public disillusionment with Barisan for backing Sukarno. 'As PM once said, you can't afford to be sentimental when you are fighting for the life of a community. The outcome was crucial not only for ourselves but also for the ideals we were working for... We had to grow what is known as calluses.'
According to declassified British diplomatic correspondence, ISC gave the green light for the operation on 16 December 1962, but it was canned after the Malayan and Singapore governments disagreed over the list of detainees. It was revived as Operation Cold Store on 2 February 1963. Fong Swee Suan was in the list of 169 names. So were many of Lee's former comrades. Lim Chin Siong was offered safe passage out of Singapore but preferred to go into captivity.
The crackdown was greeted by cries of foul play by the opposition. Its leaders charged that it was all part of a conspiracy by the British, Malayan and Singapore authorities to demolish the left and destroy organised opposition in the proposed Malaysia. 'The Brunei armed revolt provided a good excuse to put us in,' contended Fong.
Fong Swee Suan was one of 113 people picked up under Operation Cold Store on Feb 2, 1963. The big sweep was planned to stop communists and suspected communists from undermining the proposed union between Malaya and Singapore, but the opposition saw it as a sinister move to destroy the left.
The knock on the door of a terrace house on Carlisle Road off Farrer Park came in the early hours of the morning.
As Fong Swee Suan rubbed the sleep off his eyes, he was astonished to see Chew Tong Li, his former neighbour and friend from his hometown in Johor, in a policeman's uniform toting a long gun. Memories of their basketball-playing days in Senggarang flashed through his mind.
But this was no courtesy visit. Chew was part of a team who had come to arrest the Barisan leader and radical trade unionist in an islandwide sweep dubbed Operation Cold Store on 2 February 1963.
Fong recalled: 'He stood there for a few minutes looking stunned. I told him: 'It's okay. You do your duty.' Then he said: 'Wah, it's you. How could it be you?''
Fong was driven in a car with several detainees from his home in Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. It was only when they stopped for lunch did he learn about the scale of the operation. After spending a night in the capital, he was taken to a forested area and kept in solitary confinement for six months.
Then he was packed off to another camp where he found himself in the same cell with fellow PAP founder-convenor and rural association head Chan Chiaw Thor. Fong and Chan were among the eight detainees released on 4 June 1959 as a condition for PAP's assumption of power after winning the elections.
As Fong recollected: 'It was a cement cell. Even the bed was made of cement. Except for a few books, nothing was supplied to us as they wanted to make sure we would not use a blanket or whatever to commit suicide.
'I was interrogated day and night for six months. I was asked about all my activities. They tried to find out if I had a communist connection. At night, they put an alarm clock outside my cell which rang every 15 minutes. I couldn't sleep.'
Other than Fong, the big names caught in the dragnet were Barisan CEC members Lim Chin Siong, Lim Hock Siew and Poh Soo Kai, and unionists S. Woodhull, James Puthucheary, Jamit Singh and Lim Shee Ping. In all, 113 people were rounded up, including 24 Barisan members, 21 trade union leaders, 17 Nanyang University (Nantah) students and graduates, seven members of rural associations, and five journalists.
However, all 13 Barisan legislative assemblymen and party chairman Lee Siew Choh were spared.
Planned by the Internal Security Council (ISC), the round-up was named Cold Store because it was meant to put communists and suspected communists 'away for a little while', explained a former Special Branch officer involved in the operation.
The PAP government told the public that ISC acted against the detainees for seeking to sabotage Malaysia and supporting the armed insurrection which broke out in Brunei on 8 December 1962. Led by Brunei Partai Rakyat leader A. M. Azahari, the revolt was aimed at foiling the entry of the Borneo territories into Malaysia, but it was crushed by British troops flown in from Singapore.
Barisan secretary-general Lim Chin Siong was accused of meeting Azahari in Singapore on the eve of the rebellion and conspiring to stage a simultaneous uprising in Singapore. Fong Swee Suan, however, strongly denied all these charges, saying that what Azahari and Barisan had in common was just the aim of getting rid of colonialism.
The big sweep took place against the backdrop of Confrontation or Konfrontasi launched by President Sukarno of Indonesia on 20 January 1963 to abort the proposed Malaysia union. The unofficial war, which combined military action, political subversion and infiltration of agents, was instigated by Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), or the Indonesian Communist Party, which was allied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP).
Toh Chin Chye maintained that Operation Cold Store was meant to pre-empt the communist united front from mounting any violence or creating any disorder in the closing stages of the establishment of Malaysia. 'Malaya could not allow Singapore to become the Cuba of Malaysia, a safe base from which MCP could launch a political offensive against Malaysia.'
The 'clean-up' was necessary, argued S. Rajaratnam, because of Indonesia's hostility and plans by communist parties in Malaya and the Borneo territories to disrupt Malaysia.
C. V. Devan Nair remembered discussing with Lee the need for such an operation in view of growing public opinion against Confrontation and public disillusionment with Barisan for backing Sukarno. 'As PM once said, you can't afford to be sentimental when you are fighting for the life of a community. The outcome was crucial not only for ourselves but also for the ideals we were working for... We had to grow what is known as calluses.'
According to declassified British diplomatic correspondence, ISC gave the green light for the operation on 16 December 1962, but it was canned after the Malayan and Singapore governments disagreed over the list of detainees. It was revived as Operation Cold Store on 2 February 1963. Fong Swee Suan was in the list of 169 names. So were many of Lee's former comrades. Lim Chin Siong was offered safe passage out of Singapore but preferred to go into captivity.
The crackdown was greeted by cries of foul play by the opposition. Its leaders charged that it was all part of a conspiracy by the British, Malayan and Singapore authorities to demolish the left and destroy organised opposition in the proposed Malaysia. 'The Brunei armed revolt provided a good excuse to put us in,' contended Fong.
Goh Keng Swee's Legendary Thriftiness - Sept 6 2009
It was one of those sweltering days in May when the PAP candidate for Kreta Ayer and his canvassers went campaigning in the squatter slums and labyrinthine lanes of gu chia chwee ('bullock cart water' in Hokkien), the colloquial term for Chinatown.
Dripping in sweat and hoarse from making incessant pleas to residents to vote for the party, the group was relieved when Goh Keng Swee stopped by a sugar cane stall. As they huddled around the oasis expectantly, the former senior civil servant placed 10 cents, gulped down his drink and mumbled 'I have paid for my drink. If you want to have a drink, go ahead', before walking away. They were stunned.
'We looked at him, the stallholder looked at us. We thought he would be giving all of us a drink.' Chan Chee Seng, who accompanied Goh on his 1959 election rounds, was recounting yet another anecdote about the legendary thriftiness and frugality of Singapore's famed finance minister.
If that was not ample proof of Goh's parsimony, Chan found it when he rode in his car, a rattling Vauxhall which had seen better days. It was with a gasp of disbelief when he realised that part of the vehicle's floor panel had corroded to such an extent that 'you could see right through to the road'. 'You see,' he shook his head, 'Goh did not even want to pay for a rubber mat to cover the gaping hole, let alone repair it!'
S R Nathan, who worked with Goh in the defence ministry in the 1970s, said that Goh was so averse to spending that whenever he travelled overseas he would carry soap flakes to wash his underwear in the hotel bathroom. Former diplomat Maurice Baker visited Goh in his hotel room during a trip one day and saw him drying his one and only piece of underwear on the heater.
To today's Singaporeans, these penny-pinching habits would seem ridiculous and laughable but they formed the hallmark of PAP's founding fathers. Thrift was their name. Nothing was more repulsive than waste and extravagance. 'I can count the number of treats they gave me on my fingers,' Chan reminisced with a grimace. 'If a minister offered us a cup of coffee, it meant a cup. He would not offer another cup and we wouldn't dare ask.'
If you could not get a treat from them, it was even less likely you could get a loan. That Shakespearean maxim 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be'' would sum up their attitude towards money to a T. As an up-and-coming lawyer, Lee Kuan Yew would often receive an appeal for a loan and his Hamlet-like reply would be: 'I am afraid I will not be able to make you a loan. It is against my principles to lend money to a friend because I have found from my personal experience that when I gain a debtor, I lose a friend.'
On that sultry day in Kreta Ayer, Chan and fellow party members felt much disconcerted by Goh's close-fistedness. Now with the benefit of hindsight, Chan realised that it embodied the qualities that made the man such a great steward of Singapore's hard-earned finances. 'He wasn't squeezing us. He just didn't want to squander money. Every cent counted. We were lucky we had ministers like Dr Goh. That's why Singapore could save a lot of money and become one of the most affluent countries in the world,'' ruminated Chan.
Toh Chin Chye was lost in thought on a drive around the city in 2003.
Many of the gleaming towering edifices were unrecognisable to him.
What on earth was that, he asked pointing suddenly to the spiky durian-shaped structure on Marina Bay. As the car cruised around the Rochor Road area where he used to be member of parliament, the sight of the teeming crowds at Bugis Village snapped him out of his reverie. 'For what you have now, you've got to thank Dr Goh,' he blurted out.
Dripping in sweat and hoarse from making incessant pleas to residents to vote for the party, the group was relieved when Goh Keng Swee stopped by a sugar cane stall. As they huddled around the oasis expectantly, the former senior civil servant placed 10 cents, gulped down his drink and mumbled 'I have paid for my drink. If you want to have a drink, go ahead', before walking away. They were stunned.
'We looked at him, the stallholder looked at us. We thought he would be giving all of us a drink.' Chan Chee Seng, who accompanied Goh on his 1959 election rounds, was recounting yet another anecdote about the legendary thriftiness and frugality of Singapore's famed finance minister.
If that was not ample proof of Goh's parsimony, Chan found it when he rode in his car, a rattling Vauxhall which had seen better days. It was with a gasp of disbelief when he realised that part of the vehicle's floor panel had corroded to such an extent that 'you could see right through to the road'. 'You see,' he shook his head, 'Goh did not even want to pay for a rubber mat to cover the gaping hole, let alone repair it!'
S R Nathan, who worked with Goh in the defence ministry in the 1970s, said that Goh was so averse to spending that whenever he travelled overseas he would carry soap flakes to wash his underwear in the hotel bathroom. Former diplomat Maurice Baker visited Goh in his hotel room during a trip one day and saw him drying his one and only piece of underwear on the heater.
To today's Singaporeans, these penny-pinching habits would seem ridiculous and laughable but they formed the hallmark of PAP's founding fathers. Thrift was their name. Nothing was more repulsive than waste and extravagance. 'I can count the number of treats they gave me on my fingers,' Chan reminisced with a grimace. 'If a minister offered us a cup of coffee, it meant a cup. He would not offer another cup and we wouldn't dare ask.'
If you could not get a treat from them, it was even less likely you could get a loan. That Shakespearean maxim 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be'' would sum up their attitude towards money to a T. As an up-and-coming lawyer, Lee Kuan Yew would often receive an appeal for a loan and his Hamlet-like reply would be: 'I am afraid I will not be able to make you a loan. It is against my principles to lend money to a friend because I have found from my personal experience that when I gain a debtor, I lose a friend.'
On that sultry day in Kreta Ayer, Chan and fellow party members felt much disconcerted by Goh's close-fistedness. Now with the benefit of hindsight, Chan realised that it embodied the qualities that made the man such a great steward of Singapore's hard-earned finances. 'He wasn't squeezing us. He just didn't want to squander money. Every cent counted. We were lucky we had ministers like Dr Goh. That's why Singapore could save a lot of money and become one of the most affluent countries in the world,'' ruminated Chan.
Toh Chin Chye was lost in thought on a drive around the city in 2003.
Many of the gleaming towering edifices were unrecognisable to him.
What on earth was that, he asked pointing suddenly to the spiky durian-shaped structure on Marina Bay. As the car cruised around the Rochor Road area where he used to be member of parliament, the sight of the teeming crowds at Bugis Village snapped him out of his reverie. 'For what you have now, you've got to thank Dr Goh,' he blurted out.
On the brink of collapse - ST Sept 6 2009
On the brink of collapse
After losing two by-elections in Hong Lim and Anson in 1961, a weakened PAP was challenged by its dissident legislative assemblymen who opposed the proposed merger with Malaya. The Lee government teetered on the brink of collapse as its 43-8 majority in June 1959 was whittled down to 26-25 by July 1961.
Lee Kuan Yew decided that it was time to draw a line in the sand. What better way to do it than to move a motion of confidence in the legislative assembly - every PAP member would be compelled to stand up and be counted.
He knew that at least eight dissidents had turned against him during the Anson campaign.
It was a dangerous gamble to take in the 51-seat chamber. If 26 assemblymen voted against the motion, his government would fall leading to the possible formation of a leftist government or precipitating a general election in which the PAP was more than likely to lose in the wake of the double by-election fiascos.
As Low Por Tuck recalled, the prime minister convened a City Hall meeting and called on all PAP assemblymen to support merger and sign a form pledging full confidence in him. Low expressed reservations saying that 'it was like signing a blank cheque to support merger' and requested a postponement for the signing. The next day, he received a notice for the motion of confidence sitting.
Ong Chang Sam said that some assemblymen appealed to Lee to change his policies in the light of the by-election failures and loss of popular support for the party. They expressed concerns that the merger could be used against the leftists but Lee turned them down and so they did not sign the forms.
Meanwhile, the leftists were zealously soliciting support too. After being rebuffed by the CEC in their bid to stage a conference of all 51 party branches to challenge Lee, they held a flurry of meetings to cajole and coax their uncommitted colleagues to line up with them.
Buang Omar Junid, the then-member for Kallang, was roped into a City Hall meeting held by Lee Siew Choh and attended by a dozen assemblymen. He listened to Wong Soon Fong, Lin You Eng, Ong Chang Sam and Chan Sun Wing declaring that they no longer believed in Lee's leadership and urging the group to unite and leave the PAP.
'Everyone was asked in turn and each indicated his support...When I was asked to speak, I said I wanted to find out if what was said was right or not,' recounted Buang. Later he told Lee Siew Choh he would not join them as he had full confidence in the prime minister.
Lee Khoon Choy referred to another City Hall meeting held by Chan Sun Wing among the parliamentary secretaries. They talked about taking over the Cabinet following Lee's threat to quit as prime minister. At one point, he said, Sheng Nam Chin turned to him and uttered: 'You be the prime minister.'
K C, as he was better known, remembered that he almost burst into laughter when they discussed what portfolios they should take over - Chan Sun Wing as minister for education, Sheng Nam Chin as minister for health and Low Por Tuck as minister for finance. When he realised they were using him against Lee, he left the meeting. Chan Sun Wing and Sheng Nam Ching had since denied that there was ever such a meeting. Sheng retorted: 'Who am I to offer him the post of prime minister?'
Yaacob Mohamed, one of the nine parliamentary secretaries then, cited a similar bid by leftists to topple Lee and seize power. His recollection was that Siew Choh would be prime minister with Lee Khoon Choy as deputy prime minister and Sheng Nam Chin as health minister. He said that he was offered a ministerial post if he were to join them.
In former British journalist Dennis Bloodworth's account, Lee had collected 24 signed pledges of support when he entered the house to move his motion of confidence. The whip was lifted to allow a free vote. The debate lasted a record-breaking 13 hours and 21 minutes, having started on 20 July at 2.34pm and ending the next day at 3.55am.
The jam-packed public gallery was treated to an unprecedented spectacle which saw PAP assemblymen lunging at one another's jugular with acidic barbs and stinging metaphors. Lim Yew Hock and his Singapore People's Alliance (SPA) colleagues gloated over the intra-party fighting. One UMNO representative derided PAP as a gadoh-gadoh ('quarrelling' in Malay) party.
They mocked Lee for bringing a party dispute into a public chamber at taxpayers' expense. The PAP leftists joined in the condemnation arguing that the motion should be thrashed out in the party rather than in the assembly. But Lee's key contention was that the ruling party must know where it stood as it prepared for merger with Malaya and settle the conditions before presenting it to the people.
As the time to call for a division or to take a vote neared, Lee made a headcount and found that he was short of one vote to secure a majority. All attention was focused on PAP member for Siglap Sahorah binte Ahmat, a plump Malay housewife who was then laid up in hospital with a big question mark over her party allegiance.
Chan Chee Seng volunteered to fetch her from hospital to vote for the motion. 'At first PM dismissed my suggestion saying I would be wasting my time as the leftists had already won her over. But Toh Chin Chye told Lee to let me give it a try. And so off I went.'
At Singapore General Hospital, Chan found Sahorah in tears.
Complaining that no one in PAP cared about her, she said she had given her word to the leftists. Chan appealed to her not to switch sides saying that if she did not vote for her party, the PAP government would collapse.
She relented and Chan arranged for the hospital to send her to the assembly house in an ambulance. 'Sahorah was carried up to the chamber. We walked in, the door closed and the bell rang. She voted just in time. I flashed a V sign to a smiling Lee,' said Chan.
A July 22 report in Nanyang Siang Pau said that Sahorah was rushed by ambulance to the chamber to cast her decisive vote. It noted that she was helped to her seat by Chan Choy Siong and Ismail Rahim at 3.25am when Lee was delivering his closing speech.
When the motion of confidence was finally put to a vote, the result revealed a fragmented house: 27 ayes, 8 nays and 16 abstentions. PAP clinched 26 votes from its own assemblymen plus one more vote from independent member C H Koh. Workers Party's David Marshall and all SPA members voted against the motion. In all, 13 dissident PAP assemblymen abstained, joined by their former colleagues in the United People's Party (UPP) - Ong Eng Guan, Ng Teng Kian and S V Lingam.
Why did they abstain? Ong Chang Sam explained that they could not vote against the motion as they were still PAP members and were hoping that the government could be pressurised into changing its policy on merger. Low Por Tuck said that they had no intention of throwing out the PAP government.
A new opponent
Ploughing through the speeches in the Hansard, or verbatim record of the marathon sitting, you could sense the poignancy of friendships lost and relationships severed.
For The Big Split was not just a political episode about the break-up of a ruling party, it was an all-too-human story about people caught up in a vortex of emotions as they turned against one another.
You could discern the note of sentimentality in Lee's voice when he said that it was with sadness that he watched the resolve of his friends and comrades melting in the heat of the battle. They were not crooks and rogues, he lamented, but they lacked the sternness of purpose in the face of strong persuasion and silent intimidation.
Referring to S T Bani as a friend twice, Lee recounted how they fought together to stop the Singapore Traction Company Employees' Union (STCEU) from falling under communist domination. Goh Keng Swee spoke movingly of his friendship with Lee Siew Choh, how it began over the chessboard and lasted through the years.
For Lee, perhaps 'the most unkindest cut of all' came from his own parliamentary secretary, Chan Sun Wing, whom he had trusted as his aide and friend. He was shocked when he learnt from Special Branch that Chan was plotting against him in the Canning Rise quarters. Ditto for Goh when he found that his own parliamentary secretary, Low Por Tuck, whom he liked immensely, had also switched sides.
The PAP leaders also found that their faith in supposedly non-communist professionals was sadly misplaced. Medical practitioners Lee Siew Choh and Sheng Nam Chin had no qualms about crossing to the leftist camp and leading the charge against them.
To Lee, it was as clear as daylight that if you did not vote for his motion, you were against it. The 13 PAP assemblymen who abstained were sacked from the party. They comprised the five parliamentary secretaries - Lee Siew Choh, Sheng Nam Chin, Chan Sun Wing, Leong Keng Seng and Low Por Tuck, and backbenchers Wong Soon Fong, Ong Chang Sam, Tee Kim Leng, Lin You Eng, Tan Cheng Tong, Teo Hock Guan, S T Bani and Fung Yin Ching. The three non-elected political secretaries, Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan and S Woodhull, were also given the boot.
On the day of their expulsion, Low Por Tuck recalled, the assemblymen gathered at - where else? - the house on the hill to ponder their next move. They decided to form a new party called Barisan Sosialis ('Socialist Front' in Malay) to provide an alternative government for Singapore.
Formed on 13 August 1961 and registered on 17 September 1962, it became the biggest opposition party in the house. Lee Siew Choh was elected chairman, Woodhull vice-chairman, Lim Chin Siong secretary-general, Poh Soo Kai assistant secretary-general and Low Por Tuck treasurer. Its CEC members included Lim Hock Siew, Wong Soon Fong, Fong Swee Suan, Chan Sun Wing, Ong Chang Sam, S T Bani, T T Rajah and the Puthucheary brothers.
A five-pointed red star set in a blue circle against a white background was adopted as the Barisan logo. Its uncanny resemblance to the star on communist China's flag discomfited James Puthucheary who lobbied for a change to a four-pointed or three-pointed star without success.
But what really shook PAP to its very foundations was the mass defections of its branches and members. Some 35 out of 51 branches crossed over to Barisan together with 19 out of 23 branch secretaries. To Lee's dismay, he learnt that his Tanjong Pagar branch had been pulled like a rug from under his feet. His branch secretary, Chok Kor Thong, turned out to be the ringleader involved in mobilising all 51 PAP branches against the leadership.
When Toh went to his Rochor branch, he found that his branch secretary had vanished. K C said that his Bukit Panjang branch 'just disappeared' when more than half of his committee members, including his chairman and secretary, joined the exodus.
Many branches were literally stripped bare when their officials scooted. Desks, chairs, teacups, kettles, clocks, cupboards, fans and sewing machines were carted away only to re-appear at the Barisan branches. Barisan signboards were displayed brazenly at some PAP branches.
Giving their side of the story, Ong Chang Sam said that all the committee members of his Chua Chu Kang branch decided to join Barisan after he warned them that the government would use merger against the leftists. Sheng Nam Chin said that he would have been isolated if he had not allowed his Nee Soon branch to defect.
For PAP, the loss of 35 branches was just the first staggering blow. Two more, aimed at delivering the knockout punch, were to come.
To reach out to the people, the government had set up the People's Association (PA) in 1960 with its network of community centres. The Works Brigade (WB) was formed to train unemployed youths in bricklaying, farming, water pipe repairs and other vocational skills.
But unknown to the party leaders, communist agents had burrowed deeply into both organisations. A stark admission of communist infiltration came from a former MCP member who said that the underground gave him the signal to join PA.
Pro-Barisan PA employees mounted a 10-month strike from September 1961. Joining them were many community centre leaders as well as PA staff members. And when the strikers realised they could no longer return to PA, he said, they resorted to political agitation over merger against the government.
Over at the WB, some 2,000 unruly members staged a mutiny when they defied instructions and refused to work. The Cabinet decided on an overwhelming display of force to overawe the strikers. It worked. When soldiers surrounded the camp with fixed bayonets, the youngsters capitulated.
Behind the uprising in the PAP branches and PA was none other than the prime minister's parliamentary secretary, Chan Sun Wing. Ong Pang Boon said that Chan was able to convince Lee to appoint many of the defecting PAP organising secretaries despite their security records. As Chan was also in charge of staff recruitment for PA, he enlisted many of the community centre leaders into his camp.
As for the instigator of the Works Brigade incident, all fingers pointed at Wong Soon Fong, who was attached to the labour ministry as 'chief of staff' of the uniformed group. Goh believed that Chan and Wong were deliberately planted in the government by MCP cadre Fang Chuang Pi to outmanoeuvre Lee.
Chan Chee Seng and Wong were colleagues in the brigade when hostilities broke out. The tension spilled over into their Canning Rise quarters. When they went to bed in the same room, they turned away from each other without wishing one another good night.
Teetering on the brink
Two by-election defeats. Mass defections from the party. People's Association and Works Brigade under siege. Labour movement led by leftists. Rural, youth and student organisations captured by pro-communists. Public opinion swinging towards the opposing camp.
PAP faced its darkest hour in history as it teetered on the brink of collapse. From 43 seats in the 51-seat assembly in June 1959, its massive majority had dwindled to a wafer-thin 26-25 by July 1961 when the 13 PAP rebels crossed the floor.
Like a punch-drunk boxer, the party was reeling on the ropes. Lim Kim San recalled a despondent Goh saying that there were times when they thought of calling it quits and asking Lim Chin Siong to take over.
In a despatch to London dated 17 July 1961, Selkirk referred to a dinner with Lee and Goh and recorded: 'I found them pretty broken men, extremely jumpy and uncertain of their political future.'
Lee told him that he could rely on only 23 certain votes in the assembly and that he could hold on for another three months before the communists took over. 'He now has considerable doubts whether Singapore can be governed on the basis of one man, one vote, and that the government of Singapore must now pass to the communists, the British or the Federation of Malaya,' wrote the UK commissioner.
At a Special Branch briefing, its director Richard Corridon commented that what took place in the weeks after The Big Split was an 'exact repetition of what happened under Lim Yew Hock with unions in full cry and rapid rebuilding of open front organisations'. He warned that PAP was no match for Lim Chin Siong and the Middle Road unions.
As the merger debate gathered momentum, each sitting lent itself to high drama and cliffhanger suspense. The opposition smelled blood and called for a division at every opportunity. What grated Lee and company even more was that they had to depend on the support of their legislative enemies in SPA to fend off the advances of their former comrades.
One more turn of the screw came during a crucial debate on the Malaysia plan on 3 July 1962. Ho Puay Choo resigned from the party to be an independent saying that she did not agree with the terms for merger.
When she joined Barisan on 11 August 1962, the pendulum swung to a perilous 25-26. The PAP had lost its majority.
As luck would have it, S V Lingam resigned from UPP and rejoined PAP, and it was back to 26-25. Phew!
Fate then intervened to give the power equation another hair-raising twist. On 21 August 1962, Ahmad Ibrahim, the minister for labour, died of liver disease at the age of 35 and the house was deadlocked at 25-25.
As the prospect of another by-election loomed - with talk of Lim Chin Siong standing - the spectre of Hong Lim and Anson rose to haunt PAP all over again.
After losing two by-elections in Hong Lim and Anson in 1961, a weakened PAP was challenged by its dissident legislative assemblymen who opposed the proposed merger with Malaya. The Lee government teetered on the brink of collapse as its 43-8 majority in June 1959 was whittled down to 26-25 by July 1961.
Lee Kuan Yew decided that it was time to draw a line in the sand. What better way to do it than to move a motion of confidence in the legislative assembly - every PAP member would be compelled to stand up and be counted.
He knew that at least eight dissidents had turned against him during the Anson campaign.
It was a dangerous gamble to take in the 51-seat chamber. If 26 assemblymen voted against the motion, his government would fall leading to the possible formation of a leftist government or precipitating a general election in which the PAP was more than likely to lose in the wake of the double by-election fiascos.
As Low Por Tuck recalled, the prime minister convened a City Hall meeting and called on all PAP assemblymen to support merger and sign a form pledging full confidence in him. Low expressed reservations saying that 'it was like signing a blank cheque to support merger' and requested a postponement for the signing. The next day, he received a notice for the motion of confidence sitting.
Ong Chang Sam said that some assemblymen appealed to Lee to change his policies in the light of the by-election failures and loss of popular support for the party. They expressed concerns that the merger could be used against the leftists but Lee turned them down and so they did not sign the forms.
Meanwhile, the leftists were zealously soliciting support too. After being rebuffed by the CEC in their bid to stage a conference of all 51 party branches to challenge Lee, they held a flurry of meetings to cajole and coax their uncommitted colleagues to line up with them.
Buang Omar Junid, the then-member for Kallang, was roped into a City Hall meeting held by Lee Siew Choh and attended by a dozen assemblymen. He listened to Wong Soon Fong, Lin You Eng, Ong Chang Sam and Chan Sun Wing declaring that they no longer believed in Lee's leadership and urging the group to unite and leave the PAP.
'Everyone was asked in turn and each indicated his support...When I was asked to speak, I said I wanted to find out if what was said was right or not,' recounted Buang. Later he told Lee Siew Choh he would not join them as he had full confidence in the prime minister.
Lee Khoon Choy referred to another City Hall meeting held by Chan Sun Wing among the parliamentary secretaries. They talked about taking over the Cabinet following Lee's threat to quit as prime minister. At one point, he said, Sheng Nam Chin turned to him and uttered: 'You be the prime minister.'
K C, as he was better known, remembered that he almost burst into laughter when they discussed what portfolios they should take over - Chan Sun Wing as minister for education, Sheng Nam Chin as minister for health and Low Por Tuck as minister for finance. When he realised they were using him against Lee, he left the meeting. Chan Sun Wing and Sheng Nam Ching had since denied that there was ever such a meeting. Sheng retorted: 'Who am I to offer him the post of prime minister?'
Yaacob Mohamed, one of the nine parliamentary secretaries then, cited a similar bid by leftists to topple Lee and seize power. His recollection was that Siew Choh would be prime minister with Lee Khoon Choy as deputy prime minister and Sheng Nam Chin as health minister. He said that he was offered a ministerial post if he were to join them.
In former British journalist Dennis Bloodworth's account, Lee had collected 24 signed pledges of support when he entered the house to move his motion of confidence. The whip was lifted to allow a free vote. The debate lasted a record-breaking 13 hours and 21 minutes, having started on 20 July at 2.34pm and ending the next day at 3.55am.
The jam-packed public gallery was treated to an unprecedented spectacle which saw PAP assemblymen lunging at one another's jugular with acidic barbs and stinging metaphors. Lim Yew Hock and his Singapore People's Alliance (SPA) colleagues gloated over the intra-party fighting. One UMNO representative derided PAP as a gadoh-gadoh ('quarrelling' in Malay) party.
They mocked Lee for bringing a party dispute into a public chamber at taxpayers' expense. The PAP leftists joined in the condemnation arguing that the motion should be thrashed out in the party rather than in the assembly. But Lee's key contention was that the ruling party must know where it stood as it prepared for merger with Malaya and settle the conditions before presenting it to the people.
As the time to call for a division or to take a vote neared, Lee made a headcount and found that he was short of one vote to secure a majority. All attention was focused on PAP member for Siglap Sahorah binte Ahmat, a plump Malay housewife who was then laid up in hospital with a big question mark over her party allegiance.
Chan Chee Seng volunteered to fetch her from hospital to vote for the motion. 'At first PM dismissed my suggestion saying I would be wasting my time as the leftists had already won her over. But Toh Chin Chye told Lee to let me give it a try. And so off I went.'
At Singapore General Hospital, Chan found Sahorah in tears.
Complaining that no one in PAP cared about her, she said she had given her word to the leftists. Chan appealed to her not to switch sides saying that if she did not vote for her party, the PAP government would collapse.
She relented and Chan arranged for the hospital to send her to the assembly house in an ambulance. 'Sahorah was carried up to the chamber. We walked in, the door closed and the bell rang. She voted just in time. I flashed a V sign to a smiling Lee,' said Chan.
A July 22 report in Nanyang Siang Pau said that Sahorah was rushed by ambulance to the chamber to cast her decisive vote. It noted that she was helped to her seat by Chan Choy Siong and Ismail Rahim at 3.25am when Lee was delivering his closing speech.
When the motion of confidence was finally put to a vote, the result revealed a fragmented house: 27 ayes, 8 nays and 16 abstentions. PAP clinched 26 votes from its own assemblymen plus one more vote from independent member C H Koh. Workers Party's David Marshall and all SPA members voted against the motion. In all, 13 dissident PAP assemblymen abstained, joined by their former colleagues in the United People's Party (UPP) - Ong Eng Guan, Ng Teng Kian and S V Lingam.
Why did they abstain? Ong Chang Sam explained that they could not vote against the motion as they were still PAP members and were hoping that the government could be pressurised into changing its policy on merger. Low Por Tuck said that they had no intention of throwing out the PAP government.
A new opponent
Ploughing through the speeches in the Hansard, or verbatim record of the marathon sitting, you could sense the poignancy of friendships lost and relationships severed.
For The Big Split was not just a political episode about the break-up of a ruling party, it was an all-too-human story about people caught up in a vortex of emotions as they turned against one another.
You could discern the note of sentimentality in Lee's voice when he said that it was with sadness that he watched the resolve of his friends and comrades melting in the heat of the battle. They were not crooks and rogues, he lamented, but they lacked the sternness of purpose in the face of strong persuasion and silent intimidation.
Referring to S T Bani as a friend twice, Lee recounted how they fought together to stop the Singapore Traction Company Employees' Union (STCEU) from falling under communist domination. Goh Keng Swee spoke movingly of his friendship with Lee Siew Choh, how it began over the chessboard and lasted through the years.
For Lee, perhaps 'the most unkindest cut of all' came from his own parliamentary secretary, Chan Sun Wing, whom he had trusted as his aide and friend. He was shocked when he learnt from Special Branch that Chan was plotting against him in the Canning Rise quarters. Ditto for Goh when he found that his own parliamentary secretary, Low Por Tuck, whom he liked immensely, had also switched sides.
The PAP leaders also found that their faith in supposedly non-communist professionals was sadly misplaced. Medical practitioners Lee Siew Choh and Sheng Nam Chin had no qualms about crossing to the leftist camp and leading the charge against them.
To Lee, it was as clear as daylight that if you did not vote for his motion, you were against it. The 13 PAP assemblymen who abstained were sacked from the party. They comprised the five parliamentary secretaries - Lee Siew Choh, Sheng Nam Chin, Chan Sun Wing, Leong Keng Seng and Low Por Tuck, and backbenchers Wong Soon Fong, Ong Chang Sam, Tee Kim Leng, Lin You Eng, Tan Cheng Tong, Teo Hock Guan, S T Bani and Fung Yin Ching. The three non-elected political secretaries, Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan and S Woodhull, were also given the boot.
On the day of their expulsion, Low Por Tuck recalled, the assemblymen gathered at - where else? - the house on the hill to ponder their next move. They decided to form a new party called Barisan Sosialis ('Socialist Front' in Malay) to provide an alternative government for Singapore.
Formed on 13 August 1961 and registered on 17 September 1962, it became the biggest opposition party in the house. Lee Siew Choh was elected chairman, Woodhull vice-chairman, Lim Chin Siong secretary-general, Poh Soo Kai assistant secretary-general and Low Por Tuck treasurer. Its CEC members included Lim Hock Siew, Wong Soon Fong, Fong Swee Suan, Chan Sun Wing, Ong Chang Sam, S T Bani, T T Rajah and the Puthucheary brothers.
A five-pointed red star set in a blue circle against a white background was adopted as the Barisan logo. Its uncanny resemblance to the star on communist China's flag discomfited James Puthucheary who lobbied for a change to a four-pointed or three-pointed star without success.
But what really shook PAP to its very foundations was the mass defections of its branches and members. Some 35 out of 51 branches crossed over to Barisan together with 19 out of 23 branch secretaries. To Lee's dismay, he learnt that his Tanjong Pagar branch had been pulled like a rug from under his feet. His branch secretary, Chok Kor Thong, turned out to be the ringleader involved in mobilising all 51 PAP branches against the leadership.
When Toh went to his Rochor branch, he found that his branch secretary had vanished. K C said that his Bukit Panjang branch 'just disappeared' when more than half of his committee members, including his chairman and secretary, joined the exodus.
Many branches were literally stripped bare when their officials scooted. Desks, chairs, teacups, kettles, clocks, cupboards, fans and sewing machines were carted away only to re-appear at the Barisan branches. Barisan signboards were displayed brazenly at some PAP branches.
Giving their side of the story, Ong Chang Sam said that all the committee members of his Chua Chu Kang branch decided to join Barisan after he warned them that the government would use merger against the leftists. Sheng Nam Chin said that he would have been isolated if he had not allowed his Nee Soon branch to defect.
For PAP, the loss of 35 branches was just the first staggering blow. Two more, aimed at delivering the knockout punch, were to come.
To reach out to the people, the government had set up the People's Association (PA) in 1960 with its network of community centres. The Works Brigade (WB) was formed to train unemployed youths in bricklaying, farming, water pipe repairs and other vocational skills.
But unknown to the party leaders, communist agents had burrowed deeply into both organisations. A stark admission of communist infiltration came from a former MCP member who said that the underground gave him the signal to join PA.
Pro-Barisan PA employees mounted a 10-month strike from September 1961. Joining them were many community centre leaders as well as PA staff members. And when the strikers realised they could no longer return to PA, he said, they resorted to political agitation over merger against the government.
Over at the WB, some 2,000 unruly members staged a mutiny when they defied instructions and refused to work. The Cabinet decided on an overwhelming display of force to overawe the strikers. It worked. When soldiers surrounded the camp with fixed bayonets, the youngsters capitulated.
Behind the uprising in the PAP branches and PA was none other than the prime minister's parliamentary secretary, Chan Sun Wing. Ong Pang Boon said that Chan was able to convince Lee to appoint many of the defecting PAP organising secretaries despite their security records. As Chan was also in charge of staff recruitment for PA, he enlisted many of the community centre leaders into his camp.
As for the instigator of the Works Brigade incident, all fingers pointed at Wong Soon Fong, who was attached to the labour ministry as 'chief of staff' of the uniformed group. Goh believed that Chan and Wong were deliberately planted in the government by MCP cadre Fang Chuang Pi to outmanoeuvre Lee.
Chan Chee Seng and Wong were colleagues in the brigade when hostilities broke out. The tension spilled over into their Canning Rise quarters. When they went to bed in the same room, they turned away from each other without wishing one another good night.
Teetering on the brink
Two by-election defeats. Mass defections from the party. People's Association and Works Brigade under siege. Labour movement led by leftists. Rural, youth and student organisations captured by pro-communists. Public opinion swinging towards the opposing camp.
PAP faced its darkest hour in history as it teetered on the brink of collapse. From 43 seats in the 51-seat assembly in June 1959, its massive majority had dwindled to a wafer-thin 26-25 by July 1961 when the 13 PAP rebels crossed the floor.
Like a punch-drunk boxer, the party was reeling on the ropes. Lim Kim San recalled a despondent Goh saying that there were times when they thought of calling it quits and asking Lim Chin Siong to take over.
In a despatch to London dated 17 July 1961, Selkirk referred to a dinner with Lee and Goh and recorded: 'I found them pretty broken men, extremely jumpy and uncertain of their political future.'
Lee told him that he could rely on only 23 certain votes in the assembly and that he could hold on for another three months before the communists took over. 'He now has considerable doubts whether Singapore can be governed on the basis of one man, one vote, and that the government of Singapore must now pass to the communists, the British or the Federation of Malaya,' wrote the UK commissioner.
At a Special Branch briefing, its director Richard Corridon commented that what took place in the weeks after The Big Split was an 'exact repetition of what happened under Lim Yew Hock with unions in full cry and rapid rebuilding of open front organisations'. He warned that PAP was no match for Lim Chin Siong and the Middle Road unions.
As the merger debate gathered momentum, each sitting lent itself to high drama and cliffhanger suspense. The opposition smelled blood and called for a division at every opportunity. What grated Lee and company even more was that they had to depend on the support of their legislative enemies in SPA to fend off the advances of their former comrades.
One more turn of the screw came during a crucial debate on the Malaysia plan on 3 July 1962. Ho Puay Choo resigned from the party to be an independent saying that she did not agree with the terms for merger.
When she joined Barisan on 11 August 1962, the pendulum swung to a perilous 25-26. The PAP had lost its majority.
As luck would have it, S V Lingam resigned from UPP and rejoined PAP, and it was back to 26-25. Phew!
Fate then intervened to give the power equation another hair-raising twist. On 21 August 1962, Ahmad Ibrahim, the minister for labour, died of liver disease at the age of 35 and the house was deadlocked at 25-25.
As the prospect of another by-election loomed - with talk of Lim Chin Siong standing - the spectre of Hong Lim and Anson rose to haunt PAP all over again.
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