in Kuala Lumpur as pro-communists. The Malaysian
Special Branch arrested
Samad and his Kuala Lumpur group. Hussein Onn had had the courage to act
against a pro-communist Malay intelligentsia although this was likely to cost
him some support.
Hussein had fond memories of Singapore. He had studied at Telok Kurau
English School in 1933–34, the years when I was also a student there. He was a
little diffident at the beginning and was happy that I treated him with respect. I
was impressed by his integrity and his good intentions. I took up his invitation to
visit Malaysia in December 1976, when he briefed me on his internal security
and Thai border problems. We also discussed economic cooperation.
Our relations had started off on a good footing but unfortunately he was
influenced by the anti-Singapore feelings of Johor UMNO leaders, especially the
menteri besar
,
Othman Saat, the most important UMNO leader in Hussein’s
home state. Othman injected his visceral dislike for Singapore into Hussein, who
repeated to me Othman’s complaints: we had caused a shortage of workers in
their factories by attracting their workers to work in Singapore for more pay;
Johor Bahru shopkeepers lost business because of competition from Woodlands
New Town on our side of the Causeway. (In the 1990s, when one Singapore
dollar was worth more than two ringgit, they
complained that Singaporeans
flocked to their shops causing prices to rise for their locals.)
The most absurd allegation of the
menteri besar
repeated by Hussein was
that pig waste from our farms was polluting the straits between Johor and
Singapore. And for good measure, that land reclamation
on our northern coast
had caused flooding in their southern coastal villages in the Tebrau area. I
carefully explained that land reclamation on Singapore’s northern coastline
could not cause flooding in Johor; hydrologically this was impossible. And the
pig waste pollution could not have come from Singapore because all our run-offs
were trapped in rivers that had been dammed to form estuarine reservoirs with
strict anti-pollution measures for the water to be potable.
He accepted my
explanations.
Despite amicable relations with Hussein, the Malaysians continued to take a
series of actions which they thought would slow down our economy. First the
Johor state government banned the export of sand and turf. Then the federal
government ruled that from 1977, all exports from Johor to East Malaysia must
be shipped through Pasir Gudang port, not through Singapore. From 1980, they
limited the carriage of all domestic cargo between Malaysian ports to their own
vessels. They carried out these policies although their people had to pay the
increased costs. Johor leaders convinced Hussein that we were out to harm Johor
and prevent its economic progress. They even persuaded Hussein to tell the press
in January 1979 that he was considering stopping the railway in Johor and not
Singapore, in order to develop Pasir Gudang as a port.
One incident which added to this bitterness occurred in December 1976 after
our general election. ISD officers
found that Leong Mun Kwai, the secretary-
general of the People’s Front and an opposition candidate, had made defamatory
remarks against me in the election that month because he had been paid to do so
by the Malaysian Special Branch. We put him on television to admit this. He
was convicted for criminal defamation and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Leong told the ISD that UMNO leader Senu Abdul Rahman, the former
Malaysian minister of culture, youth and sports, had personally told Leong to try
to destroy my reputation.
On economic cooperation, I said we
were moving away from simple
manufacture into higher value-added products with more machines. We were
also moving more into services – repairing of aircraft, working with computers
and so on. We would be happy if our factories, short of labour in Singapore,
relocated to Johor. Nor did we want to block the growth of their port in Pasir
Gudang.
Although he was influenced by his Johor UMNO leaders to be suspicious of
Singapore, I found Hussein fair-minded. He wanted
to do right by his country
and by those who dealt with him. He was not as quick as Razak but was
thorough, careful and did not have second thoughts after a decision. He weighed
his words carefully.
In 1981 Hussein flew to London for a medical checkup. He was diagnosed as
having heart trouble and resigned soon after. He went back to law and died in
1990. He had won my respect as a man of integrity. Sitting at the top of an
UMNO machine that was based on money politics,
Hussein was completely
honest. He tried to clean up corruption, especially in the states. He authorised the
prosecution in November 1975 against the
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