From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Delicate Malay Issues
Some sensitive matters, however, could not be publicly debated. One such issue
was what to do with the concentrations of Malays in poor conditions that from
colonial days had existed in and beyond what the British had designated as
“Malay settlements”. At separation in August 1965 the Tunku had offered free
land in Johor to Singapore Malays who felt abandoned. Few took up his offer.
But their segregation had contributed to isolation and disaffection because these
settlements tended to be depressed areas which had become ghettos: muddy,
winding, unpaved lanes between shanty huts of wood with zinc or thatched
roofs. The most troubling concentration was in Geylang Serai, which together
with Kampong Ubi and Kampong Kembangan formed the biggest Malay
settlement where over 60,000 Malays lived with no piped water or sanitation.
People collected water from public standpipes sited on the side of lanes and
carried it home in buckets or paid a water carrier to do so. There was no power
supply although some private operators sold electricity illegally. In September
1965, one month after separation, I told residents that in ten years all their shacks
would be demolished and Geylang Serai would be another and a better
“Queenstown”, then our most modern high-rise housing estate.
We kept this promise. As part of our long-term plan to rebuild Singapore and
re-house everybody, we decided to scatter and mix Malays, Chinese, Indians and
all others alike and thus prevent them from congregating as they had been
encouraged to do by the British. On resettlement, they would have to ballot for
their new high-rise homes.
Meanwhile, to prevent another ugly situation from arising should there be
another race riot, I decided to extend, in waffle-grid fashion, four roads that went
through the Geylang Serai Malay settlement area, at the same time widening the
existing lanes and lighting up the highways. In six to seven years, one large
ghetto became nine small pockets. The most difficult part was the initial
resettlement which began in February 1970. When we announced it, there was
apprehension among the Malay residents. Our Malay MPs played a critical role
in mediating between government officials and residents. The press and radio
helped to publicise the government’s compensation package and the alternative
accommodation offered. By then the 
Utusan Melayu
had ceased to circulate in
Singapore and could not work up unfounded fears as it had done in 1964 over
the resettlement at Crawford.
The most politically sensitive building to remove was a dilapidated 
surau
(a
small mosque). Every house of worship, however insignificant, had a committee

---

of religious elders and activists who collected tithes and donations for its
maintenance. When the time came for the 
surau
to be demolished, they squatted
in the premises and refused to leave. They read the government’s actions as anti-
Islam. Our Malay MPs arranged a meeting in September 1970 at City Hall,
where my office was, for the 
surau
committee and members to make
representations to senior officials from the Public Works Department and the
Housing and Development Board. With the help of our Malay MPs, we
persuaded them to allow the old wooden building to be demolished, giving them
the assurance that a new one would be built close to the existing site. The next
day, our Malay MPs and the president of MUIS, the Muslim governing body for
Singapore, addressed some 200 of the congregation at the 
surau
after Friday
prayers. Our MP, Rahmat Kenap, a doughty former trade union leader who had
been unshaken when roundly denounced during the 1964 race riots as a 
kafir
or
infidel by UMNO leaders, reassured the congregation with the government’s
pledge to build a new mosque to replace an existing one. They finally agreed to
move out. This paved the way for the demolition and rebuilding of some 20
other small mosques in the settlement. We offered alternative sites and found a
solution for financing their new mosques. I gave MUIS the responsibility for
building replacement mosques and set up for them a building fund which
received S$l per month from each Muslim worker through our CPF system. This
gave our Malays pride in building their mosques with their own funds.
Moving the house owners was less difficult. They were given compensation
at set rates, according to whether the houses were built with or without
government approval, plus a “disturbance allowance” of S$350 per family,
which at the time was more than a month’s salary for a labourer. They were
given priority in the new housing estates and the freedom to choose the locality
of their new homes. In spite of all these concessions, a group of 40 families
refused to vacate their premises until we brought them to court.
When the roads were finally completed and brightly lit I was greatly relieved
as I drove through the area one night, happy at the visibly improved security and
social ambience. After Geylang Serai, it was easier to integrate the other Malay
settlements.
Although we mixed the races by making them ballot for their flats, we found
that they were collecting together again. When owners sold their flats and were
able to buy resale flats of their choice, they soon recongregated. This forced us
in 1989 to put percentage limits (25 per cent for Malays, 13 per cent for Indians
and other minorities per block) beyond which no minority family could move

---

into the neighbourhood.
This quota ceiling limited the pool of buyers for certain resale flats and so
depressed their prices. When a Malay or Indian is not allowed to sell to a
Chinese because the Chinese quota has already been filled, the flat invariably
sells at a price lower than the market rate because the smaller numbers of Malay
or Indian buyers are not able to pay the higher price which the Chinese majority
can. However, this is a small cost for achieving our larger objective of getting
the races to intermingle. Dhanabalan, an Indian, as minister in charge of the
HDB, Jayakumar, minister for law, another Indian, and Ahmad Mattar, minister
for the environment, a Malay of Arab descent, fully agreed with me that to allow
re-segregation would be retrograde and would reverse what we had achieved.
Our other Malay and Indian MPs also shared this view. This made it easier to
implement this policy.
When this task was completed by the 1980s, I decided it would be necessary
to change the election laws to have joint candidates contesting two or more
constituencies. After much discussion in cabinet, we took the matter to
Parliament. Three or four single-member constituencies were amalgamated into
single group representation constituencies (GRCs) to be contested by three or
four candidates as a group or team which had to include one candidate from a
minority community, an Indian or Malay. Without this arrangement, the Chinese
majority in all constituencies would most likely return Chinese candidates. In the
1950s and ’60s, people had voted for the party symbol, regardless of the
candidate’s race. In the 1980s, after the PAP had established itself as the
dominant party and was seen as likely to be returned in office, people voted
more for the MP than for the party. They preferred one who empathised with
them, spoke the same dialect or language and was of the same race. All
candidates who have campaigned know this only too well. It was going to be
difficult if not impossible for a Malay or Indian candidate to win against a
Chinese candidate. To end up with a Parliament without Malay, Indian and other
minority MPs would be damaging. We had to change the rules. One advantage
of a GRC is that Chinese candidates cannot make Chinese chauvinist appeals
without losing the 25–30 per cent non-Chinese vote. They need a Malay or an
Indian who can win over the minority votes to be a member of their GRC team
of candidates.
Another racially sensitive problem that troubled me was the consistently

---

poorer performance in mathematics and science of a larger percentage of Malay
students compared to other students. I decided that we could not keep these
differences in examination results secret for long. To have people believe all
children were equal, whatever their race, and that equal opportunities would
allow all to qualify for a place in a university, must lead to discontent. The less
successful would believe that the government was not treating them equally. In
1980 I brought the Malay community leaders into my confidence in order to
tackle the problem of Malay underachievement openly and sensitively. I
provided the leaders, including newspaper editors, with the examination results
for the previous 10–15 years and highlighted the fact that the same differences in
results had existed in British colonial Singapore before the war. It was not
something new.
After the community and media leaders had got over their initial shock, we
invited them to seek solutions with the government’s full support. I told them of
studies that showed a 15–20 per cent improvement in student performance when
the parents and students were motivated to make that extra effort. Their reaction
was positive. In 1982 the Malay leaders with the assurance of government
support formed Mendaki (Majlis Pendidikan Anak-Anak Islam – Council on
Education for Muslim Children), with representatives from Malay social, literary
and cultural bodies and PAP Malay MPs. We provided them with the premises.
As with the mosque building fund, to finance Mendaki we deducted 50 cents
from each Malay’s monthly CPF contribution. The contributions increased
gradually, with increased incomes, to S$2.50. The government matched it dollar
for dollar.
I invariably consulted my Malay colleagues including Othman Wok and
Rahim Ishak before deciding on policies affecting the Malays. Both were
practical in their outlook. I also consulted Yaacob Mohamed when Islamic issues
were involved. He had been a preacher in Kelantan and was well respected as a
man of some religious learning. Ahmad Mattar was a realist and accepted this as
the best way to get results.
Not all my older ministers were comfortable with this move towards
community-based self-help groups. Raja was the most strongly opposed to it. He
was a total multiracialist and saw my plan not as a pragmatic acceptance of
realities, but as backsliding. He did not want to use natural racial bonds to reach
out to parents who could best motivate their children. He feared the risk of
strengthening communal pulls.
While I shared Raja’s ideal of a completely colour-blind policy, I had to face

---

reality and produce results. From experience we knew that Chinese or Indian
officials could not reach out to Malay parents and students in the way their own
community leaders did. The respect these leaders enjoyed and their sincere
interest in the welfare of the less successful persuaded parents and children to
make the effort. Paid bureaucrats could never have the same commitment, zest
and rapport to move parents and their children. On such personal-emotional
issues involving ethnic and family pride, only leaders of the wider ethnic family
can reach out to the parents and their children.
A few years after Mendaki got into its stride, the efforts of Malay community
leaders plus the extra tuition in the evenings showed in a steady increase of
Malay students passing examinations, with substantial progress in mathematics.
In 1991 a group of young Muslim graduates formed the Association of Muslim
Professionals (AMP). They had objectives similar to Mendaki’s but wanted to
work independently of the government. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong
encouraged them with financial support. With more of their community leaders
helping the less successful Muslim youths, the results improved.
Our Malay students scored higher than the international average in the Third
International Mathematics and Science study in 1995. Of the 1987 cohort of
Malay students, only 7 per cent made it to polytechnics and universities. By
1999 this figure had quadrupled to 28 per cent while the national percentage had
only doubled. A Malay girl on scholarship graduated summa cum laude in
English from the University of California at Berkeley in 1996. One Malay
student topped his graduating architecture class in 1999 at the National
University of Singapore, winning a gold medal. Another won a government
scholarship to Cambridge where he obtained first class honours in physics and
went on to take his PhD in 1999. And a Malay was elected president of the
students’ union at the Nanyang Technological University in 1998–99. We now
have a growing Malay middle class of managing directors of MNCs, IT
consultants, start-up entrepreneurs, forex dealers, bank managers, engineers,
lawyers, doctors and businessmen in tourism, food, contracting, furniture and
clothing trades.
The progress achieved by Mendaki also encouraged the Indian community to
form the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) in 1991. The
following year, the Chinese formed the Chinese Development Assistance
Council (CDAC) to help their weaker students, smaller in percentage terms than
the Malay underachievers but larger in total number. The Eurasian Association
soon did likewise.

---

---