From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

9. Straddling the Middle Ground
The PAP has won 10 successive general elections since 1959, a period of 40
years. It has not gone flabby or effete. How did we do it? Between 1959 and
1965, we had fearful clashes, first with the communists and then the Malay
communalists. On independence, we faced dire threats, Indonesia confronting us
and Malaysia determined to bypass us. This series of events forged a bond of
trust between that generation of voters and the old guard PAP leaders.
Our critics believed we stayed in power because we have been hard on our
opponents. This is simplistic. If we had betrayed the people’s trust, we would
have been rejected. We led them out of the depths of despair in the 1960s into an
era of unprecedented growth and development. We took advantage of the
expansion in world trade and investments to move from Third World to First
World standards in one generation.
We had learnt from our toughest adversaries, the communists. Present-day
opposition leaders go on walkabouts to decide where they will do well, based on
the way people respond to them at hawker centres, coffee shops, food courts and
supermarkets, and whether people accept the pamphlets they hand out. I have
never believed this. From many unhappy encounters with my communist
opponents, I learnt that while overall sentiment and mood do matter, the crucial
factors are institutional and organisational networks to muster support. When we
went into communist-dominated areas, we found ourselves frozen out. Key
players in a constituency, including union leaders and officials of retailers’ and
hawkers’ associations and clan and alumni organisations, would all have been
brought into a network by communist cadres and made to feel part of a winning
team. We could make little headway against them however hard we tried during
elections. The only way we could counter their grip of the ground was to work
on that same ground for years between elections.
To compete against the self-improvement night classes at the pro-communist
unions and associations, we formed the People’s Association (PA). We brought
into the PA, as corporate members, many clan associations, chambers of

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commerce, recreational clubs and arts, leisure and social activity groups. They
provided advice and services in more than one hundred community centres we
set up to conduct literacy classes in Chinese and English, and courses in sewing,
cooking and repairing motorcars, electrical instruments, radios and television
sets. By competing against and outdoing the communists, we gradually won
back part of the ground they had cultivated.
During my constituency tours in 1962 and 1963, I had assembled activists in
smaller towns and villages all over the island. They were the local leaders of
various associations and clubs who constituted themselves as welcoming
committees for their area to discuss with me and my team of officials road
improvements, street lights, standpipes and drains to alleviate flooding. After my
visits, work teams would follow up, providing the funds to execute such
projects.
While in Malaysia, after the race riots in 1964, we formed “goodwill
committees” to keep communal relations from boiling over. Committee
members were drawn from grassroots leaders of the different communities in the
area.
I built on these “welcoming” and “goodwill” committees by coopting their
more active and promising members into management committees (MCs) of
community centres and into citizens’ consultative committees (CCCs). MCs of
the community centres organised recreational, educational and other activities.
CCCs, with funds we provided, did local improvement projects, the smaller
public works. They also raised their own funds, to provide welfare grants and
bursaries for the needy.
Community leaders at that time were reluctant, even fearful, to identify
themselves openly with a political party. They preferred to be associated with
the government. It was a hangover from the colonial period, especially during
the years of the Emergency when the communists were active and any
identification with political parties competing against the MCP could bring
retribution. By creating semi-government institutions like the MCs and CCCs we
mobilised a wide spectrum of elders who were respected in their own
communities. They worked with our MPs between elections, and during election
time their influence and support flowed through into the voting, even though
some of them stayed neutral rather than campaign actively.
Later, as the population moved into HDB high-rise blocks, I formed
residents’ committees (RCs), each serving a precinct of six to ten blocks. This
made for closer interaction between leaders and the residents of these blocks.

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Hence in our HDB new towns, there is a network that leads from the RCs to the
MCs and CCCs on to the prime minister’s office, the nerve centre. Opposition
leaders on walkabouts go through well-tended PAP ground. Naturally there are
floating voters. But there is a hard core of local leaders who know that their PAP
MP, backed by the government, will attend to their needs whether during or
between elections.
A turning point was the general elections in 1968, soon after the British had
announced the withdrawal of their forces. We won all seats by an overwhelming
majority. By 1972, four years later, the people were relieved and happy that we
had accomplished a near miracle. In spite of the withdrawal of British forces,
and with it the loss of 20 per cent of our GDP and some 50,000 jobs, we had
high economic growth and lower unemployment. American multinational
companies were creating thousands of jobs in electrical and electronic factories.
When I called for elections in September 1972, 57 out of 65 seats were
contested. We won them all, scoring 70 per cent of the votes.
We were to repeat this total sweep again in 1976, winning 37 seats
uncontested and all the 38 contested seats. The standing of the PAP leadership
and the progress we had achieved made it difficult for the opposition. People had
full confidence in the PAP leadership and were not interested in having an
opposition. They wanted to get on with economic growth, leave their squatter
huts for new flats they would buy with rising incomes from well-paid jobs, and
send their children to the better schools we were building. The tide was rising for
all. We had a fourth clean sweep in 1980 – 37 seats unopposed, and the
remaining 38 contested seats with 77.5 per cent of votes cast.
The non-communist opposition politicians who emerged to fill the vacuum
left by the communists were mostly opportunist types. During elections, they
espoused programmes that would appeal to their pro-communist following. But
as long as they were not led by English-educated professionals who could lend
respectability to a communist front, as David Marshall’s old Workers’ Party had
done, they posed no danger. It was in this context that J.B. Jeyaretnam, a lawyer,
appeared in a revived Workers’ Party. As its candidate in the 1972 election, he
advocated abolishing the Internal Security Act. Earlier, in the late 1960s, he had
promised re-merger with Malaya. He aspired to be Marshall’s successor but was
not as sharp or as eloquent.
But Jeyaretnam did break the PAP’s spell of unprecedented total support in a
by-election in 1981, a year after the general elections. Devan Nair had resigned
his Anson seat to become the president. I left the arrangements for the campaign

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to the new assistant secretary-general, Goh Chok Tong. Our candidate, a keen
PAP activist, was not a good public speaker. I did not take part in the by-election
campaign, leaving it completely to Goh and the younger leaders. They were
confident we would win, but when the votes were counted on polling day, we
had lost. It was quite a shock. I was disturbed, not by the defeat, but because I
had had no signal from Goh that we might lose. I worried about his political
sensitivity. James Fu, my press secretary, told me that people on the ground
resented the over-confident attitude of the party leaders in the campaign. One
reason for the loss was obvious. A large number of Singapore port workers in
several blocks of flats had to be moved to make way for a container-holding area
but were not given alternative accommodation. The Port of Singapore Authority
and the Housing and Development Board pushed this responsibility to each
other.
Jeyaretnam (JBJ) was all sound and fury. He made wild allegations of police
high-handedness and repeated every grievance disgruntled people channelled
through him without checking the facts. That he had no principled stand suited
us, because he was unlikely to become a credible alternative. I decided he was
useful as a sparring partner for the new MPs who had not gone through the fight
with the communists and the UMNO Ultras. Besides, he filled up space on the
opposition side of the political arena and probably kept better men out. His
weakness was his sloppiness. He rambled on and on, his speeches apparently
unprepared. When challenged on the detailed facts, he crumbled.
People, however, wanted an opposition voice in Parliament. The sense of
crisis of the 1960s and ’70s had passed. Singaporeans were now more confident
and wanted the PAP to know that they could not be taken for granted. In the
1984 election we lost two seats, to JBJ in Anson and to Chiam See Tong,
another lawyer and the secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party
(SDP), in Potong Pasir. Chiam took a shrewder line than JBJ, more in tune with
the sentiments of the population, that the PAP was doing a fair job, but could do
better and should listen more to criticism. He improved his public standing. He
and the people who made up the SDP were not the types to be used by the
communists for their front activities. We treated him differently, extending him
respect and latitude. We hoped that if he expanded, those who opposed us could
gravitate towards a non-subversive opposition.
These opposition figures were unlike the formidable adversaries we had met
in Lim Chin Siong and his comrades who were serious men, committed to their
cause. Jeyaretnam was a poseur, always seeking publicity, good or bad.

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Without much of an opposition in Parliament I missed a foil to project issues.
I made up for it with a major annual speech. On a Sunday evening a week or so
after my eve-of-National-Day telecast, I would speak at an indoor National Day
rally of about 1,200 community leaders. It was televised live. With only notes, I
would speak for one to two hours on the important issues of the day. But I would
have read extensively on the subjects days before and mulled over how to
simplify my presentation. Television polls showed I had high viewership. I had
learnt how to hold the audience, both those at the National Theatre and over
television, and get them to follow my thought processes. I would speak first in
Malay, then Hokkien (later Mandarin) and last in English, my master language. I
had better rapport with my audience when I expressed my thoughts as they
formed and flowed in my mind, whereas if I had a script, I could not get my
message across with the same conviction and passion. This annual speech was
an important occasion when I set out to move the people to work together with
the government and overcome our problems.
During election time in the 1970s and ’80s, I spoke in the evenings at mass
rallies in the constituencies, and at Fullerton Square in the heat of the tropical
sun at 1–2 pm, to reach out to office workers. Sometimes there would be a heavy
shower and I would be drenched while the crowds sheltered under umbrellas or
took cover on the “five-foot-way” (covered walkway) of offices around the
square. The people stayed and I carried on. Although wet, I never felt the cold;
my adrenaline was pouring out. The spoken word on television made a far
greater impact than the written script in newspapers. My dominance of the
public platform was my strength throughout my political life.
When dealing with the opposition, I had two preoccupations: Were they
being used by the communists? And was this a “black operation”, one funded
and run by a foreign intelligence agency to cause mischief? It was this latter
concern which led to our investigation of Francis Seow, a former solicitor-
general. The Marxist group described earlier had gained influence in the Law
Society. They canvassed for him and got him elected as president. With Seow as
president, the Law Society became politicised, criticising and attacking
government legislation not on professional but on political grounds, something it
had never done as a professional organisation constituted by law to maintain

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discipline and standards in the legal profession.
Around that time, in 1987, a counsellor in the US embassy called
Hendrickson met Seow to encourage him to lead an opposition group at the next
election. The ISD recommended that we detain and interrogate Seow to get to
the bottom of the matter. I agreed. We had to put a stop to this foreign
interference in Singapore’s domestic politics and show that it was off-limits to
all, including the United States. Under interrogation, Seow admitted in a sworn
affidavit that he had been asked by Hendrickson to lead a group of lawyers to
contest the elections against the PAP. He also admitted that he had been to
Washington to meet Hendrickson’s superior in the US State Department, who
had assured him of refuge in America were he to run into difficulties with the
government. We published his admissions made in the sworn affidavit. Then we
released Seow, two months before the general elections. He contested but lost.
He was on a charge for fraudulent income tax returns at that time but we gave
him permission to travel to the United States to consult a cardiologist in New
York and to attend a human rights conference. He did not return for his trial.
Instead his lawyers submitted several medical reports from two doctors: the first,
Dr Jonathan E. Fine, who signed himself as “Executive Director” on letter paper
headed “Physicians for Human Rights”, stated that it was inadvisable for Seow
to travel internationally; the second doctor stated that Seow was unable to
undertake any air travel until treated for his heart condition. When the
prosecution produced evidence that Seow had made at least seven air trips from
December through January, the court directed that Seow submit more detailed
medical reports. When Seow failed to provide further medical reports, his
lawyers, an English Queen’s Counsel (QC) and a Singapore advocate, asked the
court to discharge them. One doctor later admitted that in fact he had not
examined him and that he had not renewed his medical licence to practise. Seow
had no standing at the Bar, having been disciplined by the Law Society for
financial misconduct. What was left of his credibility in Singapore was
destroyed. When human rights groups in America puffed him up as a major
dissident figure, Singaporeans were not impressed. Several years later we learnt
that the US government had indeed given Seow political asylum.
We had good reason for wanting to investigate Francis Seow. We knew he
owed a Singapore bank some S$350,000. The loan was not repaid for many
years. In 1986, as the date for election approached, the bank demanded payment.
He was able to pay. Where did the money come from? We had seized his books
to check for income tax and it was clear that he did not have the funds to settle

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this loan. He swore in an affidavit that it was paid by his girlfriend, or his fiancée
as he called her, Mei Siah. She told Keng Swee in Bangkok in 1989, after Seow
had fled from Singapore, that she was asked to lend Seow the money by a
Singapore businessman. A CEO of a major company who kept Mei Siah as his
mistress for a number of years told us that she was a grasping sort, extremely
tight with money, and would never have parted with S$350,000 for anyone, and
that she still had not paid him more than the sum of S$350,000 she owed him.
This suggested that the money came from some interested agency.
One imperative is to confront directly those who accuse me of corruption or
misusing the power of my office. I have always met head-on all such allegations.
At election time in many developing countries, allegations of bribery and
corruption are standard fare and are never confronted for fear of greater damage
if the minister who sues cannot stand up to cross-examination in court. I proceed
only after taking the opinions of counsel both in Singapore and in London
because, should my action fail, I have personally to carry the heavy costs: my
own lawyers’ and those of my opponents. On the other hand, I have never been
sued for defamation because I have not made any false defamatory statements.
When I said something disparaging about my opponents, I had ample evidence
to back my statements and my opponents knew that.
My first libel action to uphold the office of prime minister was in 1965
against Syed Ja’afar Albar, then secretary-general of UMNO. We were then still
in Malaysia. He had said in the