account of their past activities to our ISD and settled down to a new life in a very
different Singapore. Like Eu Chooi Yip, Sharma and the Plen’s son, they too felt
they would be better off here than in China or Thailand.
When I arrived in Beijing in August 1995, our ambassador handed me a
letter from the Plen. He wanted to meet me. Our first meeting had been in 1958
when I was just an assemblyman. Through an emissary, he had asked to see me,
so I met him quietly on a road next to the Legislative
Assembly and took him
into a committee room. He assured me his party supported me and wanted to
work together with the PAP. I asked for evidence that he was in charge of the
MCP organisation in Singapore. He said I had to take his word for it. I suggested
he prove his credentials by getting a city councillor of the Workers’ Party I
believed to be a communist cadre to resign. He agreed and asked for time. A few
weeks later the councillor resigned. It was an impressive display of his capacity
to control his members even while he was on the run from the police. We met
again on three other occasions before I formed the government.
Our final
meeting was on 11 May 1961 when I was already prime minister. He promised
me support and cooperation if I gave the communists more room to organise. I
gave him no such undertaking and he ordered his united-front organisations to
bring down the PAP government before vanishing.
That final meeting was in an unfurnished flat in an uncompleted HDB
building in Whampoa, lighted only by a candle. This time, on 23 August at 9:00
pm, I received him at Diaoyutai, in the VIP state guesthouse of the People’s
Republic of China. I wondered whether he saw the irony of the situation, that he
was calling on me in Beijing where I was the honoured guest of the communist
government and party that had been the inspiration for his life’s struggle.
It was an older and stouter Plen,
no longer the gaunt features, the lean and
hungry look of an angry, hunted revolutionary from the underground. At our last
meeting he served me warm beer. On this occasion I offered him a choice of
beer, wine, or maotai. He thanked me but said that for health reasons he would
drink plain Chinese tea. We spoke in Mandarin. He complimented me on my
fluency. I returned the compliment over his command of English. He thanked me
for allowing his son into Singapore in 1990 and letting him take a job. Choo and
my principal private secretary,
Alan Chan, sat in, and the Plen agreed to my
tape-recording our conversation.
He spoke as though his position was still that of the 1950s and wanted to
discuss the terms on which he and his 30 or so comrades could return to
Singapore. First he tried the friendly approach, that
I had a duty to resolve the
old problems. As the CPM and PAP had been friends, could they not be friends
again? I said we could, but as individuals. He said there must be some justice for
his people. It was unfair that he could not return to Singapore. I said he could,
but he must first close his accounts with the ISD by demonstrating that he had
cut off his links with the CPM.
When the soft approach failed, he talked tough, reminding me that he had
been responsible for my safety and had done much to protect me. I replied that it
was a risk I had to take; his men could have killed me but the price would have
been high. Moreover, I had been fair in giving him notice in a public speech to
leave
before Malaysia Day, September 1963, because after that the Malaysians
would be in charge of security.
He said the Malaysian Special Branch had invited him to return; why could I
not be as generous as the Malaysian government? I told him the obvious: the
CPM could not win over its Malay mass base, unlike Singapore’s Chinese base.
I suggested he accept the Malaysian government’s offer. He was not amused.
When I asked how he knew I was coming, he said it was a coincidence, that
he had come to see his uncle and had learnt of my visit from television. This was
most improbable. A retired official of the Chinese foreign ministry had given his
letter to our ambassador. The Plen must have been told by a Chinese comrade of
my visit and awaited my arrival. He also denied what Lim Chin Siong had
already revealed to the ISD, that after our final meeting in 1961, he had
personally met and ordered Lim to break up
the PAP and bring down the
government.
Before leaving, he produced a camera and asked for pictures to be taken with
my wife and me. I was happy to have a memento of the mysterious underground
leader who from his hideout in Singapore could direct his subordinates in the
open front with such total command. He had once inspired awe and fear in me.
Shorn of the mystery and power of the underground, he looked a harmless
elderly man.
Despite ruthless methods where the ends justified the means, the communists
failed, but not before destroying many who stood up against them, and others
who after joining them decided that their cause was mistaken.
