From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Party and the Indonesian Communist Party on their anniversaries. These aroused
great antipathy and animosity in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, and I did not want
that animosity reflected towards me just because I had the same blood as Zhou
Enlai. I asked rhetorically whether China could help Singapore if it clashed with
Indonesia. Kukrit, in a mischievous moment, disclosed this to the Bangkok
press.
Our relations with the Thais became closer after the Vietnamese attacked
Cambodia in December 1978. General Kriangsak, the Thai prime minister then,
had no experience in foreign affairs. His foreign minister, Dr Upadit
Pachariyangkun, was an able man, highly intelligent and German-educated, but
his experience did not extend to dealing with invading Vietnamese. It was a
critical moment for them when the Vietnamese offered not to come within 20
kilometres of the Thai border if Thailand would stay neutral and not condemn
Vietnam’s attack against Cambodia. I sent Kriangsak a letter through
Rajaratnam, my foreign minister, urging him not to agree. If he did, and the
Vietnamese subsequently breached their undertaking, he would have no standing
internationally to attack Vietnam. It was better to warn the international
community of the threat the Vietnamese posed to the rest of Southeast Asia now.
I believe the Chinese must have assured him that they would stand by him if
Thailand was attacked because Kriangsak took a stand, protested against the
invasion, and gave sanctuary to the retreating Cambodian forces and tens of
thousands of refugees.
Kriangsak was not as sharp-witted as Kukrit. He got into power because he
was commander-in-chief of the Thai army. He was prone to worrying, especially
over the fallout from the conflict in Cambodia. He had placed all his bets on the
Chinese. When Deng Xiaoping visited Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore
in November 1978, before the Vietnamese attacked Cambodia, Kriangsak’s
welcome was the warmest. As I told Deng in the car going to the airport after
our talks in Singapore, Kriangsak had taken a stand and put himself way out in
front, banking on China. If China allowed the Vietnamese a free hand in

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Cambodia, Kriangsak and Thailand would be in peril. Deng looked grim when I
described the consequences that would follow if Thailand switched sides
believing that the Soviet Union was going to prevail in Southeast Asia.
Kriangsak’s successor was General Prem Tinsulanonda. A bachelor, he was
exceptionally honest and led a government largely free from corruption. During
the eight years he was prime minister (1980–88), Thailand prospered and
economic development took off, in spite of the war in Cambodia. He was a
steady and reliable leader who held to a consistent policy, a man of few words,
no scholar, but practical. He enjoyed the king’s trust. His command of English
was not as good as Kukrit’s, but he had the better strategic sense. His neat dress
and manners reflected his self-discipline and an abstemious, almost austere
lifestyle. The personal chemistry between us was good. From time to time he
would look closely and seriously at me to say, “I agree with you. You are a good
friend of Thailand.”
His foreign minister, Siddhi Savetsila, was an air marshal with a master’s
degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Their air force leaders
were usually very well educated.) But Siddhi had more than brains. Able and
firm, he had a strong character and constancy of purpose. He was of mixed Thai
and European descent, fair-complexioned, with Eurasian features, but was
accepted by the Thais as a loyal Thai. He knew the Vietnamese were wily, and
he saw through every manoeuvre they made. Without Prem as prime minister
and Siddhi as foreign minister, we would not have been able to cooperate so
closely and successfully to tie the Vietnamese down in Cambodia. The two were
a good team that secured Thailand’s long-term security and economic
development. Without them, the Vietnamese could have succeeded in
manipulating the Thai government.
When General Chatichai Choonhavan became prime minister in August
1988, he talked of turning Indochina from a battlefield into a marketplace.
Siddhi remained as Chatichai’s foreign minister, but his position soon became
untenable. Chatichai kept contradicting him publicly until Siddhi resigned.
Because of Chatichai’s eagerness to get Thai businessmen into Vietnam’s
reconstruction, the Vietnamese hung on in Cambodia and dragged out the Paris
peace talks for another three years, to 1991.
Chatichai, when he was foreign minister in Kukrit’s government, once told
me that when he visited his constituency in the rural northeast, he would drive
up in a powerful, expensive Porsche. Asked why, he replied that if he went in an
ordinary car, the farmers would not believe that he could help them. In a

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Porsche, they knew that he was a wealthy man with the means to help them. He
did not explain what I had learnt from newspaper reports, that often the headman
was paid to ensure that he delivered the votes of his villagers.
Chatichai was an engaging character. After some involvement in a coup in
the 1960s, he had been sent to Argentina and later Switzerland, where he owned
a villa. He spent years in Europe travelling in fast cars and enjoying life. When
he was prime minister, his government was reputed to be the most corrupt in
Thai history. Bribery was accepted in Thailand as the natural order of things.
Only in the mid-1990s, with a growing educated middle class, was there disquiet
at the rampant corruption. Vast sums of money were needed to get elected. Party
leaders had to finance their supporting candidates, but after elections the leaders
and MPs had to recover their expenses. This was money politics the Thai way. In
Japan, construction contracts paid for election expenses. In Thailand, every
contract must have its payoff otherwise there would be no funds for the next
election.
On my next visit, in January 1998, in discussions Prime Minister Chuan
Leekpai, his deputy prime minister and finance minister showed their
understanding of the need to work with the IMF to restore confidence in
Thailand. By 1999 they had improved Thailand’s standing with the IMF and
international investors.
The Philippines was a world apart from us, running a different style of
politics and government under an American military umbrella. It was not until
January 1974 that I visited President Marcos in Manila. When my Singapore
Airlines plane flew into Philippine airspace, a small squadron of Philippine Air
Force jet fighters escorted it to Manila Airport. There Marcos received me in
great style – the Filipino way. I was put up at the guest wing of Malacañang
Palace in lavishly furnished rooms, valuable objects of art bought in Europe
strewn all over. Our hosts were gracious, extravagant in hospitality, flamboyant.
Over a thousand miles of water separated us. There was no friction and little
trade. We played golf, talked about the future of Asean and promised to keep in
touch.
His foreign minister, Carlos Romulo, was a small man of about five feet
some 20 years my senior, with a ready wit and a self-deprecating manner about
his size and other limitations. Romulo had a good sense of humour, an eloquent
tongue and a sharp pen, and was an excellent dinner companion because he was

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a wonderful raconteur, with a vast repertoire of anecdotes and witticisms. He did
not hide his great admiration for the Americans. One of his favourite stories was
about his return to the Philippines with General MacArthur. As MacArthur
waded ashore at Leyte the water reached his knees but came up to Romulo’s
chest and he had to swim ashore. His good standing with Asean leaders and with
Americans increased the prestige of the Marcos administration. Marcos had in
Romulo a man of honour and integrity who helped give a gloss of respectability
to his regime as it fell into disrepute in the 1980s.
In Bali in 1976, at the first Asean summit held after the fall of Saigon, I
found Marcos keen to push for greater economic cooperation in Asean. But we
could not go faster than the others. To set the pace, Marcos and I agreed to
implement a bilateral Philippine-Singapore across-the-board 10 per cent
reduction of existing tariffs on all products and to promote intra-Asean trade. We
also agreed to lay a Philippines-Singapore submarine cable. I was to discover
that for him, the communiqué was the accomplishment itself; its implementation
was secondary, an extra to be discussed at another conference.
We met every two to three years. He once took me on a tour of his library at
Malacañang, its shelves filled with bound volumes of newspapers reporting his
activities over the years since he first stood for election. There were
encyclopaedia-size volumes on the history and culture of the Philippines with his
name as the author. His campaign medals as an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader
were displayed in glass cupboards. He was the undisputed boss of all Filipinos.
Imelda, his wife, had a penchant for luxury and opulence. When they visited
Singapore before the Bali summit they came in style in two DC8s, his and hers.
Marcos did not consider China a threat for the immediate future, unlike
Japan. He did not rule out the possibility of an aggressive Japan, if
circumstances changed. He had memories of the horrors the Imperial Army had
inflicted on Manila. We had strongly divergent views on the Vietnamese
invasion and occupation of Cambodia. While he, pro forma, condemned the
Vietnamese occupation, he did not consider it a danger to the Philippines. There
was the South China Sea separating them and the American navy guaranteed
their security. As a result, Marcos was not active on the Cambodian question.
Moreover, he was to become preoccupied with the deteriorating security in his
country.
Marcos, ruling under martial law, had detained opposition leader Benigno
(Ninoy) Aquino, reputed to be as charismatic and powerful a campaigner as he
was. He freed Aquino and allowed him to go to the United States. As the

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economic situation in the Philippines deteriorated, Aquino announced his
decision to return. Mrs Marcos issued several veiled warnings. When the plane
arrived at Manila Airport from Taipei in August 1983, he was shot as he
descended from the aircraft. A whole posse of foreign correspondents with
television camera crews accompanying him on the aircraft was not enough
protection. International outrage over the killing resulted in foreign banks
stopping all loans to the Philippines, which owed over US$25 billion and could
not pay the interest due. This brought Marcos to the crunch. He sent his minister
for trade and industry, Bobby Ongpin, to ask me for a loan of US$300–500
million to meet the interest payments. I looked him straight in the eye and said,
“We will never see that money back.” Moreover, I added, everyone knew that
Marcos was seriously ill and under constant medication for a wasting disease.
What was needed was a strong, healthy leader, not more loans.
Shortly afterwards, in February 1984, Marcos met me in Brunei at the
sultanate’s independence celebrations. He had undergone a dramatic physical
change. Although less puffy than he had appeared on television, his complexion
was dark as if he had been out in the sun. He was breathing hard as he spoke, his
voice was soft, eyes bleary, and hair thinning. He looked most unhealthy. An
ambulance with all the necessary equipment and a team of Filipino doctors were
on standby outside his guest bungalow. Marcos spent much of the time giving
me a most improbable story of how Aquino had been shot.
As soon as all our aides left, I went straight to the point, that no bank was
going to lend him any money. They wanted to know who was going to succeed
him if anything were to happen to him; all the bankers could see that he no
longer looked healthy. Singapore banks had lent US$8 billion of the US$25
billion owing. The hard fact was they were not likely to get repayment for some
20 years. He countered that it would be only eight years. I said the bankers
wanted to see a strong leader in the Philippines who could restore stability, and
the Americans hoped the election in May would throw up someone who could
be such a leader. I asked whom he would nominate for the election. He said
Prime Minister Cesar Virata. I was blunt. Virata was a non-starter, a first-class
administrator but no political leader; further, his most politically astute
colleague, defence minister Juan Enrile, was out of favour. Marcos was silent,
then he admitted that succession was the nub of the problem. If he could find a
successor, there would be a solution. As I left, he said, “You are a true friend.” I
did not understand him. It was a strange meeting.
With medical care, Marcos dragged on. Cesar Virata met me in Singapore in

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January the following year. He was completely guileless, a political innocent. He
said that Mrs Imelda Marcos was likely to be nominated as the presidential
candidate. I asked how that could be when there were other weighty candidates,
including Juan Enrile and Blas Ople, the labour minister. Virata replied it had to
do with “flow of money”; she would have more money than other candidates to
pay for the votes needed for nomination by the party and to win the election. He
added that if she were the candidate the opposition would put up Mrs Cory
Aquino and work up the people’s feelings. He said the economy was going down
with no political stability.
The denouement came in February 1986 when Marcos held presidential
elections which he claimed he won. Cory Aquino, the opposition candidate,
disputed this and launched a civil disobedience campaign. Defence Minister
Juan Enrile defected and admitted election fraud had taken place, and the head of
the Philippine constabulary, Lieutenant-General Fidel Ramos, joined him. A
massive show of “people power” in the streets of Manila led to a spectacular
overthrow of a dictatorship. The final indignity was on 25 February 1986 when
Marcos and his wife fled in US Air Force helicopters from Malacañang Palace to
Clark Air Base and were flown to Hawaii. This Hollywood-style melodrama
could only have happened in the Philippines.
Mrs Aquino was sworn in as president amid jubilation. I had hopes that this
honest, god-fearing woman would help regain confidence for the Philippines and
get the country back on track. I visited her that June, three months after the
event. She was a sincere, devout Catholic who wanted to do her best for her
country by carrying out what she believed her husband would have done had he
been alive, namely, restore democracy to the Philippines. Democracy would then
solve their economic and social problems. At dinner, Mrs Aquino seated the
chairman of the constitutional commission, Chief Justice Cecilia Munoz-Palma,
next to me. I asked the learned lady what lessons her commission had learnt
from the experience of the last 40 years since independence in 1946 would guide
her in drafting the constitution. She answered without hesitation, “We will not
have any reservations or limitations on our democracy. We must make sure that
no dictator can ever emerge to subvert the constitution.” Was there no
incompatibility of the American-type separation of powers with the culture and
habits of the Filipino people that had caused problems for the presidents before
Marcos? Apparently none.
Endless attempted coups added to Mrs Aquino’s problems. The army and the
constabulary had been politicised. Before the Asean summit in December 1987,

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a coup was threatened. Without President Suharto’s firm support, the summit
would have been postponed and confidence in Aquino’s government
undermined. The Philippine government agreed that the responsibility for
security should be shared between them and the other Asean governments, in