From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

particular the Indonesian government. General Benny Moerdani, President
Suharto’s trusted aide, took charge. He positioned an Indonesian warship in the
middle of Manila Bay with helicopters and a commando team ready to rescue
the Asean heads of government if there should be a coup attempt during the
summit. I was included in their rescue plans. I wondered if such a rescue could
work but decided to go along with the arrangements, hoping that the show of
force would scare off the coup leaders. We were all confined to the Philippine
Plaza Hotel by the sea front facing Manila Bay where we could see the
Indonesian warship at anchor. The hotel was completely sealed off and guarded.
The summit went off without any mishap. We all hoped that this show of united
support for Mrs Aquino’s government at a time when there were many attempts
to destabilise it would calm the situation.
It made no difference. There were more coup attempts, discouraging
investments badly needed to create jobs. This was a pity because they had so
many able people, educated in the Philippines and the United States. Their
workers were English-speaking, at least in Manila. There was no reason why the
Philippines should not have been one of the more successful of the Asean
countries. In the 1950s and ’60s it was the most developed, because America had
been generous in rehabilitating the country after the war. Something was
missing, a gel to hold society together. The people at the top, the elite mestizos,
had the same detached attitude to the native peasants as the mestizos in their
haciendas in Latin America had towards their peons. They were two different
societies: those at the top lived a life of extreme luxury and comfort while the
peasants scraped a living, and in the Philippines it was a hard living. They had
no land but worked on sugar and coconut plantations. They had many children
because the church discouraged birth control. The result was increasing poverty.
It was obvious that the Philippines would never take off unless there was
substantial aid from the United States. George Shultz, the secretary of state, was
sympathetic and wanted to help but made clear to me that the United States
would be better able to do something if Asean showed support by making its
contribution. The United States was reluctant to go it alone and adopt the
Philippines as its special problem. Shultz wanted Asean to play a more
prominent role to make it easier for the president to get the necessary votes in

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Congress. I persuaded Shultz to get the aid project off the ground in 1988, before
President Reagan’s second term of office ended. He did; there were two
meetings for a Multilateral Assistance Initiative (Philippines Assistance
Programme): the first in Tokyo in 1989 brought US$3.5 billion in pledges, and
the second in Hong Kong in 1991, under the Bush administration, yielded
US$14 billion in pledges. But instability in the Philippines did not abate. This
made donors hesitant and delayed the implementation of projects.
Mrs Aquino’s successor, Fidel Ramos, whom she had backed, was more
practical and established greater stability. In November 1992 I visited him. In a
speech to the 18th Philippine Business Conference, I said, “I do not believe
democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe what a country needs to
develop is discipline more than democracy.” In private, President Ramos said he
agreed with me that British parliamentary-type constitutions worked better
because the majority party in the legislature was also the government. Publicly
Ramos had to differ.
He knew well the difficulties of trying to govern with strict American-style
separation of powers. The senate had already defeated Mrs Aquino’s proposal to
retain the American bases. The Philippines had a rambunctious press but it did
not check corruption. Individual pressmen could be bought, as could many
judges. Something had gone seriously wrong. Millions of Filipino men and
women had to leave their country for jobs abroad beneath their level of
education. Filipino professionals whom we recruited to work in Singapore are as
good as our own. Indeed, their architects, artists and musicians are more artistic
and creative than ours. Hundreds of thousands of them have left for Hawaii and
for the American mainland. It is a problem the solution to which has not been
made easier by the workings of a Philippine version of the American
constitution.
The difference lies in the culture of the Filipino people. It is a soft, forgiving
culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who
pillaged his country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial.
Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children
were allowed to return and engage in politics. They supported the winning
presidential and congressional candidates with their considerable resources and
reappeared in the political and social limelight after the 1998 election that
returned President Joseph Estrada. General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s commander-
in-chief who had been in charge of security when Aquino was assassinated, had
fled the Philippines together with Marcos in 1986. When he died in Bangkok,

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the Estrada government gave the general military honours at his burial. One
Filipino newspaper, 
Today
, wrote on 22 November 1998, “Ver, Marcos and the
rest of the official family plunged the country into two decades of lies, torture
and plunder. Over the next decade, Marcos’s cronies and immediate family
would tiptoe back into the country, one by one – always to the public’s revulsion
and disgust, though they showed that there was nothing that hidden money and
thick hides could not withstand.” Some Filipinos write and speak with passion. If
they could get their elite to share their sentiments and act, what could they not
have achieved?
Brunei was a placid, peaceful sultanate, wealthy with oil in the mid-1950s
when I was practising law and appeared in their courts.
The sultan, Sir Omar Ali Saifuddien, invited me as prime minister, together
with our head of state, Yusof Ishak, to his birthday celebrations in August 1960.
He was a quiet man, soft-spoken, with a friendly, attractive smile. He had few
friends, for nearly all invariably wanted to touch him for money. I met him
several times in London when I was negotiating terms for Malaysia in 1962 and
1963. He was never comfortable at the prospect of becoming a member state of
Malaysia. Most of his oil revenue would go to the federal government, and he
was not confident that the special attention the Tunku was lavishing on him
would last once he was in Malaysia: he would become just one of Malaysia’s
many sultans. I gave him my reasons why Singapore wanted to join, but left him
to make his own decision. He had legal advisers, but he made the political
decision to stay out. In retrospect, it was a sound decision. The British stayed on
from 1963 until February 1984 when they gave Brunei independence.
On one of his visits to Singapore after we separated from Malaysia, Sir Omar
smiled broadly at me with his moustache twitching and his eyes twinkling, to
say, “You are now like Brunei. It is better for you.” Indeed, we shared certain
common interests: small countries surrounded by bigger neighbours. I did not
covet his wealth, never borrowed money from him. I gave advice only when he
asked for it. He trusted me.
In 1967, after Malaysia wound up the common currency board, its members,
Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, agreed that our new currencies would be
interchangeable at par. When this arrangement was discontinued in 1973, the old
sultan decided to retain the arrangements with the Singapore currency,
interchangeability at par. He was a most frugal sultan, completely different from

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other sultans in the region. He gave Brunei a sense of financial discipline and
began the accumulation of huge assets that were managed by crown agents in
London.
When the British government pressed him to institute constitutional reforms
for democracy, to delay and buy time he abdicated in 1967 in favour of his eldest
son, Hassanal Bolkiah, then a young man training at Sandhurst. He spent a lot of
time thinking of ways to keep the British in Brunei as his protector. He refused
to have anything to do with Indonesia or Malaysia. He distrusted the Indonesians
for supporting Azahari, the leader of the Brunei People’s Party who led a revolt
in December 1962. He was wary of Malaysians because Malaysian officers
seconded to work in Brunei in the late 1950s and early ’60s had patronised his
Bruneian officers, treating them like country cousins. I was careful not to have
any Singapore officer seconded for any length of time to Brunei, and when any
was sent, made sure he was properly briefed to treat the Bruneians properly and
courteously.
At a private meeting in March 1979 I urged Sir Omar, the former sultan, or
Seri Begawan as he was called after he abdicated, to get half a foot into Asean
before Brunei’s independence in 1984. I said President Suharto of Indonesia and
Prime Minister Hussein Onn of Malaysia were both friendly and well disposed
towards Brunei. He agreed to consider seeking observer status for Brunei in
Asean, but nothing came of it. I explained to him how the world had changed.
Sir Omar held on to his implicit faith in the British, that they would always be
there to back him. He did not want to recognise Britain’s changed circumstances,
that there were no British naval or air task forces to come to Brunei’s rescue.
Visiting British ministers frequently raised Brunei with me after Mrs
Thatcher became prime minister. Her government wanted to end the protectorate
by persuading the sultan to hold elections, become a more contemporary
monarchy and be independent. I did my best to urge the Seri Begawan, Sir
Omar, and the sultan to move forward but they were not persuaded. The British
government finally concluded that regardless of whether or not Brunei had
representative government, it would have to take responsibility for its own
future. Britain would continue to give support against external threat by
maintaining a Gurkha battalion for which Brunei would pay. I urged Peter
Carrington in 1979, soon after he became foreign secretary, to be firm with
British officers who wanted to extend their stay in Brunei. They were preventing
Bruneian officials, almost all of whom had been educated in Britain, from
getting the experience they needed to run their own country. There was a

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significant change of policy after that conversation. By 1984, when Brunei
became independent, nearly all senior positions were held by indigenous
Bruneians.
In 1980 I had raised with President Suharto the question of Brunei’s possible
membership of Asean when it became independent. Suharto said he would
welcome Brunei if it wanted to join. I then persuaded the sultan to look beyond
his father’s view that Asean was unimportant; he should visit President Suharto
and the other leaders of Asean. He finally did so in April 1981. Suharto received
him warmly in Jakarta. The sultan then visited Malaysia and Thailand. When
Brunei joined in 1984, Asean membership gave it an umbrella of sorts for its
security and made it easier for the sultan to get along with his neighbours.
Brunei has enjoyed peace and stability since independence. The sultan has
grown in self-confidence. Prince Mohamed has become a knowledgeable foreign
minister and senior Bruneian officers have gained wide exposure at international
conferences and grown in their jobs. The Seri Begawan, who died in 1986,
would have been pleased with the results.
The friendship between the sultan’s father and me has continued between the
present sultan, his brothers and ministers and Prime Minister Goh and his
colleagues. It is a relationship of trust and utmost good faith.

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December 1989. My last call on the Tunku in retirement in Penang. 
(SPH)

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June 1988. A major agreement with Prime Minister Mahathir in Kuala
Lumpur to build the Linggui dam on the Johor River.