LAND, WATER AND SAND AND NEW IMMIGRANTS…
THE REAL
HISTORY OF THE CREATION OF THE REPUBLIC
OF SINGAPORE
By
Mansor Puteh
There is
a photo of Lee Kuan Yew shouting or screaming MERDEKA in 1957 when he receives
Tunku Abdul Rahman who just landed at the airport in Singapore
from London where Tunku had secured independence
for the country from Britain
This photo
which I had not seen before is found in a coffee table book on Kuan Yew
published by the Straits Times of Singapore I saw when I transited at Changi Airport
in November, 2013 when I was on my way to Porto in Lisbon
via Amsterdam in Holland
It shows
how happy Kuan Yew was greeting Tunku upon his return from London
where he had secured Merdeka or Independence for
Tanah Melayu or Malaya which was going to be
on 31 August, 1957.
Tunku
and his small retinue of political leaders of all races, from the Malayan
Chinese Association (MCA) and Malayan Indian Congress (MIC) decided not to fly
to the Sungai Besi
Airport but the one in Singapore from where they would drive to Melaka
where Tunku was to formally announce to the people of the country’s impending Independence
Tanah
Melayu or Malaya achieved Independence in 1957
as planned and on 16 September, 1963, the Federation of Malaysia was formed
which included Singapore ,
Sabah and Sarawak .
But
unfortunately, Singapore
Dr
Mahathir Mohammad said Kuan Yew wanted to be a leader of a larger country, Malaysia
So can
we say Kuan Yew was a successful political leader? No. Maybe not.
He is a
leader of such a small country, which is still totally dependent on the charity
of Malaysia for providing it
with cheap natural or raw water from Malaysia
Unfortunately,
the currency used for the payment of the water is defunct, being the British
cents; so legally can Singapore
And Malaysia was also kind enough to provide with
cheap sand to allow Singapore
to expand its maritime borders, until the sale was stopped; so Singapore now has to import more expensive sand
from Myanmar
And
there is also cheating when Kuan Yew brought in Zionist agents acting as their
military advisors but claming that they are ‘Mexicans’, which he exposed in his
autobiography.
But much
earlier, the island was stolen from Johor when Stamford Raffles cunningly lied
to Raja Hussain Shah a.k.a. Tengku Long or Raja Long, by installing him the
first Sultan of Singapore at the Padang or Field but for the excuse that the
British were allowed to establish a mere Trading Post.
But
later the British claimed the whole island by swarming it with Chinese and
Indian coolies to marginalize the majority Melayu, who they did not care to
import from the neighboring Melayu states so much so that by the late
Nineteenth Century, the Melayu had become a minority race. .
Now the
population of the Melayu in Singapore
is fourteen percent and the country makes sure it remains that way; so if there
is a diminishing percentage of the Chinese, they make sure to bring in more
Chinese from Indonesia , Hong Kong , Taiwan
and China
If this
is not done, then surely by now Singapore
In many
ways, Kuan Yew had failed; he failed to get what he had set out to do…which was
to govern Malaysia
Of
course one can see a lot of things happening in Singapore
But are
all these that Kuan Yew had wanted for Singapore
Unfortunately,
Kuan Yew did not mention about this in his autobiography or any of the
interviews he had given to the newspapers in his country or abroad when he was
alive to describe his personal feelings on his successes and failures.
And I
have read his autobiography, ‘No man is an island’ and did not see statements
attributing to these matters.
In fact,
he had also neglected to mention the time when he was lawyer for Utusan Melayu
on Cecil Street and also the Shaw Brothers’ Malay Film Production studios at 8
Jalan Ampas in Singapore when he acted as the counsel for the Melayu artistes,
whose experience he had managed to use to promote himself as a potential
political leader of Singapore.
Without this experience in dealing with the union and direct engagement with Utusan Melayu then he would not be able to be what he would later become.
Yet,
there was no real desire for Singapore to even consider the former Utusan
building as a heritage building of the country; and unfortunately, it was
demolished soon afterwards to make way for a row of new shop houses.
I had
tried to visit the former Utusan headquarters using my GPS but it did not
register the old address and the vehicle I took passed by it along the same
Cecil Street which is still there.
But I got
someone to use the GPS to take us to go to the former Shaw Brothers’ film
studios at 8 Jalan Ampas to see some of the old studio and office buildings
still standing with an information plague which looks like it is a recognition
for its past achievement.
It was
also the second time I visited the studios, with the first one I made in 1963
when the studios were churning out many interesting films that were watched by
many from all the major races in the country.
And
these two places were also where Kuan Yew used to come then for his business as
a lawyer…
(Note: I
was touched when Aziz Sattar said he had met with Kuan Yew to plead with him to
get a screening for ‘Keluarga Si Comat’ to be screened in Singapore
This film got a date at the cinemas in
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